Seeing The Rock pronounce the word ‘taint’ is a bit off especially because it comes from him too often in the mostly crapping baywatch movie made two decades later. The first seasons of Baywatch TV series from 1990s a group of Los Angeles ‘lifeguards’ get into and out of more trouble than an average intercontinental spy and that silly idea is knee deep in this movie as well.
The palpable divide is that where the show was almost documentary in its approach this new iteration is positioned as a straight out ask for a honeswt over the top comedy – one which director Seth Gordon comes all out to deliver in a very literal way by numerous male genitalia related scenes. I appreciate filth or whatever the middle class people would like to call it but the trouble with Baywatch is that the central joke of the plot was already stale before it was overdone.
This text was written by a scriptwriting team which consists of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift of Freddy vs Jason vs Freddy fame and also the Friday the 13th remake which is, um, not what you would call comedies in any universe. And even though this one is about Reno 911! writer’s stories it’s all over the place – crude comedy or well, just comedy.
Baywatch is bound to bring to mind the massive box office hit 21 Jump Street which was released in 2012 since the latter must have played a part in the making of the former. These two may be classified as the two original television drama series that have been revived in the form of comedy films. The trouble here is that Baywatch seems to borrow almost verbatim 21 Jump Street’s basic storyline; this time around it is not drug-addicted students but drug-crazed lifeguards who are out to save the beaches. It all appears to be too dull especially in the setting of 21 Jump Street where such twists in the plot were unanticipated in a good way.
Most of this remotely attractive cast is sadly relegated to smaller roles of some sort, Zac Efron playing Olympic Gold swimmer Matt Brody being one of the more unfortunate examples. In earlier comedies like the Neighbours films Efron was able to show more of the character behind the chiselled look whereas here he portrays a typical bad character with no redeeming qualities; arrogant, loud, and irritating. What’s more, midway through the film, his role flips wildly and he plays extremely stupid, so stupid he cannot wrap his mind around simple basic things.
TAMPOONS and GLOVES for Dwayne Johnson who pictures himself as chief lifeguard Mitch Buchannon is no such difference either but remains unimpressed with most of the comically directed criticisms thrown at Efron which are mostly praised one high note. It’s unfortunate because he seems to regain his weight back with a spine-shivering tattoo in the second half of the movie where his character is dragged to a middle-aged crisis. And that is when Johnson is quite easily forgiven as a dumb everyman actor for how he brings off ridiculousness.
In fact, the only other highlight is Priyanka Chopra played the villainous businesswoman Victoria Leeds, and Police story 3 features no competition. Anyone spoils Chopra’s fun and engaging performance especially where she forms the only character that breaks the monotony of the rest of the performers who stick to the shoddy delivery of the awful jokes of the film. More’s the pity because many of them do not do much of anything in the movie anymore.
Also, many interviews somehow hint that some more costs for filming arose in other countries, especially paying the actors, because some cinematic fighting looks poop because of a lack of appropriate effects: one of the boom’s debt scene with laying fire on the physical boat is awful. One had to wonder, whether folks who made that film purposely want to make it purposely look bad in a weird tribute to the badly made low budget films of the 90’s television but most probably not.
The Bennett
It was my sense that before watching Baywatch all this had a lot of potential but alas that potential is buried under weak humor that has been peddled to us under some recognizable cloak from 25 years back. 21 Jump Street succeeded as it was not only a sudden genre switch that one does not anticipate, but also an actual witty comical film where everyone brought their A game and the cast was easy to root for, but Baywatch seems to squander its pretty people on dull jokes and that’s it, not even the surprise element is on its side.
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