"Malibu Rescue": You Weren't Expecting Beefcake, Were You?

Most teen movies are usually unwatchable, with all adolescent passions and intrigues omitted in favor of "Girls! Girls! Girls!  If we win this race (or whatever the Maguffin is), we'll get Girls!"  But Savage Steve Holland's movies tend to go easy on the girl-craziness, so I was happy to review his new Malibu Rescue (2019), which happens to be the pilot for a new Netflix tv series.



Teen operator Tyler (Ricardo Hurtado), a grinning Zack Morris type from Valley, plays one too many pranks, and is assigned Junior Lifeguard training at Malibu Beach.  His co-Valley kids are woefully unprepared.  Have they ever actually seen a beach before?

Meanwhile, the rich townie snobs look down on Valley kids, and resent their intrusion into "our beach."

So it's on, nerds vs. jocks in a battle royale to see who gets to become real Junior Lifeguards.

Wait -- do they really choose lifeguards via team competitions?

There is, indeed, a pleasant lack of heterosexual interest.  No boy (that I remember) gawks at any girl, even for an instant.  There is no Girl of His Dreams for Tyler to pursue, nor a Girl Next Door Who Supported Him All Along for him to end up with.

However, there are no gay subtexts, either.  Tyler appears to have no friends.  There is no buddy-bonding, anywhere.

And the beefcake!  This is a beach.  These are lifeguards.  Where are the muscular physiques?

Every guy on the beach, child, teenager, or adult, lifeguard, junior lifeguard, or civilian -- every guy -- wears a t-shirt and shorts.  Even in crowd scenes.

Have you ever heard of a beach where no male chests on display?  It's like the 1930s, when taking off your shirt in public would get you a citation for public indecency.

Ricardo Hurtado has about a thousand physique pictures on the internet, but here he takes off his shirt exactly once, in a rescue scene where you can't see anything.

The lack of girl craziness is nice, but sometimes you need a little more than that.

My grade: D.