Ever since Kristen Bell’s glorious turn as Veronica Mars ten years ago, I have been waiting for someone to write this very deserving actress a fabulous movie to star in. As the years have gone by, I’ve dropped the “fabulous” part of that dream, wishing merely that she could land a non-supporting role in any somewhat dignified movie. The trailer for The Lifeguard promised that and more: a real, honest-to-goodness lead role for Ms. Bell in a gritty, interesting-looking indie film. And even though The Lifeguard opened at Cinema Village (not a good sign, at least in terms of its distribution,) I was quite excited to check it out.

Well, The Lifeguard is not quite the fantastic piece of cinematic art I was hoping for Kristen Bell. The opening five minutes flat-out horrified me – I kept thinking to myself “God, I hope the whole movie isn’t like this!” (luckily, it’s not.) And to my surprise, the film wound up featuring a disappointingly nominal lead role for Ms. Bell. She plays a confused 29 year old who moves back home to sort her life out, but the minute she gets there the story quickly drops the development of her character and focuses on developing the various supporting players around her – her friend in a troubled marriage, her closeted gay friend, and the weird skateboard punks she starts hanging out with, including her sexual relationship with their leader. The results are rather mixed – sometimes interesting, more often dull – but in either case the role did not play to Ms. Bell’s strengths, indeed, it hardly gave her anything to do at all. In fact, the way the film is written I’m not sure it really mattered who they cast in that lead role.

With that said, The Lifeguard is not a bad film. In fact, it kind of grew on me. It even had a basically happy ending – hell, just the fact that they wrote any ending at all puts it above a large chunk of modern indie films! The best thing about The Lifeguard is its very strong sub-theme of how leaving the city and moving back to your small home town is a very bad thing to do, and its exploration of this, while not super deep, was interesting and vaguely amusing. It also captured pretty effectively parents’ love-hate relationship with their kids. The supporting cast is pretty good, and features Mamie Gummer, who is so distinctive I actually recognized her from a marginal role in the horrible, nothing movie Twelve Thirty (2010.)

If you like gritty, unpretentious  indie films, or you like Kristen Bell, I recommend you Netflix The Lifeguard for a slow Sunday night. You could do a lot worse.