Baywatch (Dir. Seth Gordon, 1h. 56m)

 
I did not enjoy Baywatch, and so far this year it's the film I have, hand on heart, enjoyed least. Maybe I'm not the audience for a revival of Baywatch, being too young to remember the original series, or perhaps because I'm not exactly the target for frat comedy, or soft-core titillation. Or maybe because Baywatch just isn't a very good movie. Strangely, I have very little to say about it, in essence because there's not that much to it-with flimsy characters, a plot that floats between ridiculous and unusually dark for the high camp of the original series, and only occasionally punctuated by action scenes, Baywatch is a seal of a movie-on land, sluggish, unpleasant to look at, and bloated, and, whilst sleek and fast-paced in water, spends so little in it that it's barely wet.

The plot, such that it is, is this: Leeds, (played by Priyanka Chopra, the only actress in this entire film who seems to be actively enjoying herself  and who is not a single-dimensional cardboard cutout with breasts), is a business-woman who, through her drugs and real estate empire, is trying to drive the other owners in the bay out of business, and turn the entire bay out of business. Against her are the Baywatch, fronted by Mitch Buchannan, (played by an on-autopilot Dwayne Johnson), and the rest of the lifeguards, including new inductees of nerdy Ronnie, surfer Summer, and disgraced and now-on-parole-for-unknown crimes Olympic-winning swimmer, Brody (played by Zak Effron), who is not only an adrenaline junkie, but a complete mess, and at first seems incapable of working as part of a team.

From here, the film largely switches between two modes, the on-land cringe inducing comedy, which includes a scene in which our three heroes (of Summer, Mitch and Brody, with almost every other character taking a nigh-constant backseat), hide with a corpse they've previously checked, including under his genitals, for signs of the cause of his death, and the fast paced but largely moronic on-water action that involves a scene in which Mitch chases a man on a jet-ski through a suburban area.
The comedic elements...are beyond frat house, including a scene in which Ronnie, who seems to be the butt of many of the film's jokes) gets his genitals trapped in a sun lounger after having been aroused by one of the minor female characters, which escalates into most of the main cast attempting to free him. Johnson and Effron's rapport does at points click, but it's so underutilised and both seem so disinterested in what they're doing that it falls flat, such that most of the humor in Baywatch is either poorly written smut or reminding everyone for the upteenth time that, yes, Zak Effron was in High School Musical.

As for the action scenes, there are a grand total of four real action setpieces, from a rescue aboard a burning yacht to the aforementioned chase to the muddled and confusing denoument that has everything from people stabbing themselves with sea urchins to get adrenaline bursts to the villainess getting blown up by fireworks. The action scenes certainly look impressive but too often they end too soon, to make way for what passes as character development. Or lack thereof. Aside from Effron and the hapless Ronnie, not a single character is developed, and in respective cases, it's from loner douchebag to decent person and from fat comic relief to fat comic relief with girlfriend. Both Hasselhoff and Anderson make contractually obligated cameos, (Anderson doesn't even speak, but flops her hair around in bizarrely tongue-in-cheek homage to the show's overuse of slow-motion), whilst Hasselhoff essentially acts much as he did as Mitch and gives...this version of Mitch a peptalk...weird.




To reiterate my introduction...Baywatch is the worst film of the year so far for me. Ghost in the Shell may have been problematic and remade in live action vast chunks of a much better film, PotC Salazar's Revenge may have shown the cracks in both the franchise and Depp's career starting to show, and the Mummy may have been a needlessly dark imagining of a B-movie, but was at least inventive in places. Baywatch is unfunny, flatly acted, poorly plotted and has none of the ropey charm of the original series. No amount of muscled beefcake or slo-motion bouncing breasts can save Baywatch: it's a needless mess of a film that deserves to drown in its own failure.

Rating: Avoid at All Costs.