I had incredibly low expectations going into this.
Everywhere I looked I was told that it was a boring, disinteresting, filled with cheesecake and lackluster characters.
And in a way they're kind of right.
This is not an incredibly exciting film. It focuses around the life of 'Rick' played by Sam Elliott.
Rick is an ''aging''* lifeguard who has to start taking into consideration his place in the world.
He looks around and everybody else it starts to notice that he might be laying behind or at least that's how he perceives it. This isn't held by his father.
A man who insists that he's not making enough money and that he hasn't grown up because he had the audacity to do a lifeguard job and not get a ''real profession'' like his brother.
All of this becomes compounded when Rick attends his 15-year School reunions and notices a fair amount of other people who are all doing moderately well for themselves.
Of course he doesn't really interact with any of them and he doesn't know any of their personal lives stories. For all he knows these people might all be suffering with crippling alcoholism or they may find their lives needlessly empty unfulfilled.
Most of them probably don't think that they're doing well enough because they live in a system that constantly injects the notion that one has to be extremely wealthy or that they failed at life.
But it doesn't matter, Rick wants to make something more of his life and he has an opportunity to do so by getting a job as a car salesman (But it doesn't matter, Rick wants to make something more of his life and he has an opportunity to do so by getting a job as a car salesman
To be pacific it's the sale Porsches.
Which I guess at the time was the big in car?
I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure which cars were prominent in the mid-70s.
The only thing I know is that the AMC Gremlin was a big clunky piece of junk and the Japanese Market was becoming more viable in North America do to the gas crisis.)
I am really quite happy that the film ends with Rick sticking to his guns and keeping us life guarding job. He realises the importance of his work and he decides that it's really the only thing he wants to do. He doesn't want to sell cars or join the rest of the world with their mundane careers. He wants to enjoy what he knows.
You might not be able to do it forever but he could still do it for the moment and I like that in a film like this.
Littered for at the rest of the film is to relationships he has. One with a woman from his high school days who we had very light relationships with.
And another kind of icky relationship he ends up having with this 16 or 17 year old girl Wendy**. Yeah it's a bit in the statutory category but it's at least framed in a kind of sad and desperate manner.
The idea of a young girl moving to a new place and being scared out of her wits. She doesn't have any friends and doesn't know anyone else.
So she ends up turning to Rick has this kind of makeshift father figure but she ends up having a relationship with.
It's all very Freudian and thankfully the film doesn't go down an entire path of disgusting romance with the two.
Rick does the deed once, realises that it's wrong and then tries to spend the rest of the movie tying to get her to go out and live her life with people her own age.
It also doesn't really help the film that we only know Rick's side to all of this.
I feel like there's an entire other movie that could have been made from Wendy's perspective.
It would have been nice to see what her family life was like. If she indeed did have any other friends or just anything was screwed up in her Noggin.
Instead we end up with a heartbroken girl who tries to commit suicide by Drowning herself in the ocean. Then she's rescued by Rick and finally convinced to move on with her life. Kind of a quick no pain no gain kind of resolution on that one.
If you're going to introduce such heavy subject matter you should at least dedicate a little bit more time to it. At least give us a good scene or two of Wendy finally being able to get over one of her issues maybe show her in school just for a moment just to get the idea that she can finally move on.
We also get Parker Stevenson in this film. The Man Who Would go on to be Craig and Baywatch. Was this he's Noble Beginnings? We may never know.
I honestly thought he'd get more screen time in this movie. Like he's the guy that would replace Rick at some point or you could just get a bit more to do.
But he's just kind of there. They get to introduction at the beginning of the movie as the Fish Out of Water character that Rick can explain everything to and then he just kind of Dives in and out of the plot without any real rhyme or reason.
Overall I like this movie. There's not a lot to it though.
It's just one guy's life had a weird point where he has to decide on what to do and he has a few weird interactions of a couple difficult people and then just kind of settled back into where we started.
I do wonder what became of Rick and his actual love interest. The girl he knew from high school who. Has her own kid. Because he screws up up customer interaction for and then declines the job that she was so excited for him to get. I'm going to assume that relationship didn't go anywhere.
Also talk about a super misleading poster. You look at this thing in your expecting a raunchy comedy with lots of Cheesecake shots and ridiculous gimmicks. But then you watch the film and it's just a big old character drama.
*Sam Elliot's character was only supposed to be in his early 30s. Not all that old. But then he is an a life-saving situation they do tend to 1 people in their best physical condition.
Really it would have made more sense if he's in his 40s or 50s. But whatever I get with the film's going for and he's got Sam Elliott for God's sakes. You don't want to throw away that kind of talent.
**Just for the record I do not endorse an underage love story.
It was frowned upon in the 1970s. It's frowned upon to now it's something that our character really shouldn't have done and the whole thing could have easily been avoided if they just added two or three years to the girls Age. Maker the same age of the actress that played her who at the time was in her early 20s.
And as I stated my review of the film if you do want to go down this path and discuss this story you should probably dedicate your whole movie to it.
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