Director – Seth Gordon
Cast – Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, IlfeneshaHadera
Runtime – 1 h 56 min
“Are you ready? Never full of fear?” – Poor use of the theme song lyrics aside, one might fear for what is to come with the Baywatch movie. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know this movie is going to attempt to be funny, and at times it succeeds. Despite a meaningless plot, ‘Baywatch’ has its clever moments involving slapstick humour and insult bashing. There are numerous references buried in the sand of this movie, and even more punches at the ridiculousness of the legendary series. These quips are fun, tasteful, and on many levels so true at how we ate up the drama. And yes, the cameos are certainly fun to watch and well-timed.
But outside of comedy, the main selling point of this movie is the beautiful cast of lifeguards assembled for this movie. The trailers have not sold you any lies in regards to the anatomy in this movie and the sex appeal contained within. Female audience members will certainly enjoy the chiselled features of former wrestler Dwayne Johnson and former Disney Channel singing “sensation” Zac Efron. Beefy bodies and plenty of shirtless scenes had a number of my fellow audience members drooling, or at least making sounds. Fear not guys, you’ll get plenty of chances to make your own sounds and gawk at the lovely figures of Alexandra Daddarioand our very own Priyanka Chopra. These visions of loveliness not only add a little spice to add to the mix, but plenty of “bounce” to their step that brings energy to the film. In regards to the acting of most of the cast, I rest my case!
I said there was some witty moments, but we all knew this was going to be a run of the mill modern comedy. ‘Baywatch’ is loaded with shallow comedy that is stupid, crude and in many cases lazy writing. You can guess that much of it centres on the stereotypical sex jokes. Other comedic ploys focus on prolonged banter between two characters, who randomly stop in the middle of a crisis to argue their points and pointless cursing that quickly grew stale for me.
You would think the story could try to make up some of the shortcomings, but NO…that too failed miserably. It was a predictable plot from start to finish, with all the relationships, turning points, and big twists known within 
probably 30 minutes. While this should not be too startling, I had hoped that the stunts and suspense could break it up the mundane plot, but this too failed considerably. I get it, it’s a cute attempt at making an extended episode reminiscent of the show, but the execution was poor and I think that a stand-up comedy approach might have been better.
Yet the worse thing for me was Zac Efron’s character. The design of this character was annoying on so many levels that it was hard to not wish a swift end for him. The development was weak at best, minus a few well-developed scenes, and the fact that he had some of the lamer comedic moments didn’t help things at all.
To sum it up, ‘Baywatch’ is clever at times and fulfils its promise of shallow laughs. Dwayne Johnson having energy and of course the sex appeal still stands strong. They certainly polished their actors for this one so that audiences would get a feast for their eyes, but sadly that’s the only thing they could manage.‘Baywatch’ has much balancing to do for the sequel that could come, and really needs to focus on the wittier comedy and less on the innuendos.
My Verdict
My Ratings
2.5
A Painful Watch
