KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Neddy Merrill Unfortunately movies about characters adrift and trying to find themselves don't make for good cinema. Kristen Bell's misguided millennial has returned home to pick up her glory days in high school by getting her old lifeguard gig back. Thewestchestarian imagines being a lifeguard at the same small municipal pool everyday must eventually get pretty old and in real life you wouldn't want to slog back through it again for love nor money. Once installed in the tall chair the movie is unclear about what to do with Kristen's character so it introduces others with problems that are at least more comparatively interesting. Her best friend is now an assistant principal whom her old school and her aging husband are trying to tress up with the bounds of responsibility. Her rebellion against real responsibility makes Bell's characters seems fairly inconsequential and thus not really movie-worthy. The very late 20 somethings hanging around - and in some cases doing much more - with the current crop of local teenagers does come across as sort of pervy and a little pathetic. It seems like there are less pedophillc ways to rebel against adulthood. In short, the great American millennial story has yet to be written and this certainly isn't it.

SnoopyStyle Leigh London (Kristen Bell) is 29 and ten months old. She's a reporter in NYC. She feels lost and moves back in with her parents (Amy Madigan). She reconnects with her school friends Mel (Mamie Gummer) and Todd (Martin Starr). Mel is the high school vice-principal and struggling to get pregnant. Todd is still in the closet. Leigh gets her old lifeguard job at the pool. She befriends pool maintenance guy's teenage son Little Jason (David Lambert) and they become more.I really love Mamie Gummer and her struggles. I like Martin Starr also and his story could be expanded. Kristen Bell's story is probably the least interesting of the three. I still like her but it's not like she's having a grand romance. It would be better to have more time with Gummer and Starr. It takes too long having sexy time with Bell and Lambert. I didn't think it was that type of movie. There is also the character Matt. He is a big part of the ending. He should have been a much bigger part of the story. The movie should spends more time with him than the little section with Todd. He should be a bigger character. Both Matt and Little Jason are not particularly compelling. I love the three main actors but this isn't quite special enough.

brecallenmiller OMG.I'm not going to sit here and lie to y'all, I like 'em young. That's to say I'm 28 years old and I don't mind smashing the occasional 21 year old. But for Christ's sake, banging a 16 year old is just too much, even for me. Hide you children, hide your wives, because The Lifeguard and her gay friend are on the loose and both are molesting young 16 year old suicidal boys. Yes, this movie takes it to a whole other level of creepiness. I thought The Exorcist was absolutely terrifying, then I saw The Lifeguard and I haven't been the same since.

TxMike We found this one on Netflix streaming movies. We found it to be better than the IMDb rating would suggest. It is a mature theme, a 29-yr-old high achieving lady working in Manhattan, about to turn 30, and both work and relationships conspire to throw her into a dark place. Kristen Bell, who was actually about 32 during filming, is the main character, Leigh. We later find out she was class valedictorian some 12 years earlier, and none of her friends were surprised that she became an award-winning writer. But inside she was lost, and it seemed she just wanted to be a little girl again. The movie isn't clear about where it is set, but we know it was filmed around the Pittsburgh area, and at least one of the teenagers was wearing a Pittsburgh tee-shirt. So I'll go with that. But it is an attractive suburban type of community, one where you can walk a short distance and be in the woods.Leigh informs her parents that she will stay with them for a while. Aimless she decides to take a job she had as a teenager, lifeguard at the local pool. She meets some teen boys, about 16 and 17, and she instantly identifies with them. This confuses her good friend from high school, Mamie Gummer as Mel, who is now assistant principal at the school they graduated from. Plus Mel has her own set of issues, she and her husband seem to be trying to get pregnant, but she isn't sure she would be a good mom. She regresses also to some "teenage" behavior.The other key character is David Lambert as Little Jason, son of the pool maintenance man. (The character is 16 or 17, but Lambert was 19, almost 20 during filming.) He and Leigh seem to be kindred spirits, she helps him see the possibilities in life, while she sees him as the embodiment of the unfulfilled love life she thought she wanted.I thought this might be a light romantic comedy but it is far from that. It is about coming of age, but with a twist that the two 30-ish women had never really come of age. There are some pretty raw and explicit scenes depicting sex between a 29-yr-old woman and a 16-yr-old boy, which is shocking to most. I instantly found myself wondering what if it had been a 29-yr-old man with a 16-yr-old girl. It seems movies are more accepting of a teenage boy and an older woman, as in "The Summer of '42" and "Life According to Garp", just to cite a couple of others.It is hard to "rate" this movie, it isn't "enjoyable" in the usual sense but I found it to be very realistic, and it illustrates how navigating through life sometimes is very unclear. While Leigh was a writer, not a teacher, it seems virtually every week we read about a female teacher getting found out having an intimate relationship with one of her male students. The movie reflects real life.