Baywatch
2.5 out of 5
I imagine Joey and Chandler might have been real excited that this movie is coming out. If you were a watcher of “Friends,” you’ll remember the two buddies made “Baywatch” appointment TV — for all of the reasons you might expect two single guys would want to watch the show. Now Dwayne Johnson and Zach Efron take a stab at the plastic-y show from the 90’s, in their theatrical version of the life on the beach.
Directed by Seth Gordon, “Baywatch” is not really too much different from the TV show — with the exception of some pretty raunchy R-rated comedy. Take that all out, and you’d feel as though you were watching a made-for-tv special of the old show. There are plenty of slow motion shots of guys and gals wearing the famous red bathing suits, hokey villains, impossible scenarios for lifeguards, and dare I say nary one person who doesn’t look like they just stepped out of a magazine.
The basic plot is simple, there is a really good looking bad guy (in this case woman), played by Priyanka Chopra (from TV’s Quantico), who is attempting to buy all of the real estate along the entire coast line in order to set up her evil empire of drug running and organized crime. As was the case in the TV show, apparently the police are blind, along with everybody else of any importance to this horrible cloud moving in along the beach, and the only people who are capable of stopping this menace are the lifeguards — who actually spend very little time doing their real job of protecting people in the water. Chopra’s character, Victoria Leeds, has bought off much of the city council as well as other important officials, and her plan is moving along quite nicely until those pesky lifeguards decide to start snooping around. All of this leads to an epic battle where Mitch Buchannan (Dwayne Johnson), and Matt Brody (Efron), as well as the rest of the old cast fight Leeds head on, against the wishes of the police department, their bosses and I’m guessing several people who needed some help in the ocean. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how it all ends.
I suppose if you are going to this movie to relive the 90’s to a degree, or want to see a nice send up to the original show — “Baywatch” won’t let you down. It really does feel like you’re watching something that was intended for television. In fact, if you take out a lot of the character building (which there really isn’t a lot of), I think this film would have fit nicely in a one hour slot on TV. Again, the big difference is the R-rated comedy — which at times really is funny, and how the script takes several pokes of fun at the old show. “Baywatch” the TV show didn’t have too much comedy, and when it did — it was bad. This film’s comedy, while raunchy, will make you laugh — I just wish the writers would have gone all in and just made the movie an all-out comedy — without the serious elements. When the film is working it’s when you’re laughing. When it’s not — it’s when there’s some action or something on screen that is trying to move the plot along.
I seriously doubt “Baywatch” was made to win any Oscars. It was made to kick off the summer movie season, and make some money. From my point of view — it might struggle to do both.
