2017 Film Review: Baywatch (2017)

Directed by: Seth Gordon
Written by: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario
IMDb Link

There's a scene in Baywatch where David Hasselhoff shows up to motivate Dwayne Johnson to get back to the beach, after getting fired and starting work at a phone shop. During this scene, there's brief cut to a kid, only half-paying attention and bored out of his skull. At that moment, the kid exemplified how I was feeling towards the film exactly.

*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*

Dwayne Johnson is devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchanan of Baywatch. Zac Efron is Matt Brody, reckless new recruit who butts heads with Buchanan over his actions. Together, they and the team at Baywatch work to investigate a drug scheme run by Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). It's a basic crime plot reminiscent of what's been done recently in the Jump Street movies, but without nearly as many jokes along the way.

The comedy just didn't work for me here most of the time; the opening moments of the film, played out in ridiculous slow motion and emphasising the fact that Johnson is a higher being on this beach suggested that the film would be a light-hearted jab at the silly source material, but the film doesn't go on to make fun with what it has often, and when it does there's no many actual jokes or gags. The film comments about how it's ridiculous for life guards to be doing the things that the characters do in the film, but that's literally the one commentary they make and they just make it over and over again without changing it up or taking it any further. The characters still end up doing what they do, and these scenes of action are played so straight that they could've been used in a non-comedic film and there wouldn't have been much of a difference. When the film does make jokes they're generally just (sometimes literally) in-your-face dick jokes and gross-out jokes with little set-up. There's potential for some real funny stuff there, but there isn't much creativity going on. Dwayne Johnson's Buchanan being literally idolised and loved by everyone at the beach could've made for a potentially hilarious running joke throughout the whole film, but it's used for about five minutes to make two jokes and an unnecessary plot convenience. It would've been funny to see that go absurd, such as the sand statue of his getting bigger every day, or him being so loved that people literally just walk up to him on the beach and give him cocktails, or have people come from nowhere to anoint the ground he stands on with gifts, just something to totally overblow the fact that the people on the beach essentially worship Buchanan for his efforts. Unfortunately, it's a joke that doesn't really go anywhere, and that's about the same for every joke in the film; there aren't any long set up jokes with a strong payoff, and the throwaway jokes are weak and too few and far between to maintain my interest.

Aside from the comedy, there's obvious appeal to a general audience in the fact that Johnson and Efron have their shirts off for a considerable amount of the film, and while the exploitation is tame by comparison, the same can be said for the bikini and swimsuit-clad women that pepper the screen at all times. Seriously, I think most people would enjoy being the director of photography on one of these types of films. That's all there is to the movie, really, and that's fine in and of itself, but it doesn't stop the movie from being a relatively straight action flick with the usual emotional beats that doesn't take nearly as much of an advantage of its opportunity to have fun with its silliness. It's so tone deaf of the film to give Efron's Brody a tragic backstory and create an arc for him to learn to work with a family because he never had one; it's a progression that never really has a climactic moment and just sort of happens as the film wraps up its drug plot. With the drug plot in mind, I appreciated the way Chopra hammed up her performance on-screen, but her breasts got more development than her character (that's not necessarily a criticism and generally expected in these types of movies, but I couldn't get that line out of my head and had to write it down somewhere). I didn't hate this film, but it never engaged me or entertained me much more than mildly; I can recall only one joke really making me laugh more than a slight 'ha'. 

The Verdict: I found Baywatch to be entertaining for about thirty minutes total, which is a shame considering it goes for nearly two hours. The film seems to desperately want to be like the successful 21 Jump Street reboots, falling flat on all of the same emotional beats, but it simply isn't consistently funny or endearing enough to do so. It's never aggressively unfunny, but the film seems caught between trying to play up its own ridiculousness and telling the story and characters straight, so we get an odd mix of not quite screwball and not quite comedic drama.

Rating: 4.5/10

Published June 3rd, 2017