Missed Opportunities... "Baywatch"

Baywatch (2017)

Rated R

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Ilfenesh Hadera

Directed by Seth Gordon

The Story:

Lt. Mitch Buchannon (Johnson) leads his elite Baywatch squad to protect Emerald Bay from any and all dangers. This summer will be most trying though as they are training 3 rookies to join the team at the same time a dangerous synthetic drug keeps washing up onshore. When the police seem unwilling or unable to handle it, it's up to the lifeguards to save the day.

As with many of the relaunched "used to be a TV show, let's turn it into a movie!" ideas, Hollywood seems to never know what to do with these properties.

Quick, throw the f-bomb every 2 minutes to make sure we get an R rating!

Joke after joke, either situational or dialogue. Some of them will work, some won't!

Are they homages to what came before or parodies of the same material?

It seems like nobody knows for sure, or they keep changing their minds every 5 pages of script.

Here too is the downfall of Baywatch.

There are moments when it's a fun action comedy, then it tries to get too serious.

There are moments when it's madcap zaniness, R rated raunch-com.

It's just whirling around in a blender, and you're never entirely sure what's going to pour out onto the screen next.

It seems that going forward, if these movies are going to be made, pick a tone and stick to it.

The cast does everything they can, and then some, to make the material work.

Efron and Johnson have these parts down to where they can simply go on autopilot and it works, but they need a stronger, more consistent script to make us actually care to see it.

Thankfully it wasn't a huge waste of time like I feared, but if you saw the trailer, you pretty much saw the movie.


 Final Grade: C