The definition of a sleeper hit has changed drastically thanks to the advent of streaming, with movies that are years and often decades old regularly finding a new lease of life and an entirely fresh reappraisal when they end up becoming surprise on-demand success stories.
The latest case in point is The Guardian, which spent the last week inching its way up the Netflix most-watched to crack the Top 25, as per FlixPatrol. A box office bomb starring the unlikely duo of Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher hardly seems like it’d be worth a revisit on paper, but you can really never predict what tickles the fancies of subscribers on any given day.
In The Guardian, Costner is a veteran rescue swimmer still mourning the loss of his crew who busies himself training new recruits. One of them happens to be Kutcher’s arrogant former swimming champion, and you’ll be shocked to discover that their mutual distrust eventually thaws to form into respect and ultimately even friendship.
A 37% Rotten Tomatoes score and a $95 million box office haul on a $70 million budget means The Guardian isn’t quite a disaster, just an entirely disposable and forgettable disappointment, a sentiment that Netflix viewers may or may not be discovering for themselves.
