Baywatch is the latest attempt to take an hour long TV drama and turn it into a comedy feature. After the success of 21 Jump Street it was inevitable, but the problem is that CHIPs and Baywatch simply try and recreate the magic that was 21 Jump Street. Neither film brings anything new to the table and, possibly worse, they can’t even get the formula right to at least match the film that inspired this process.
Baywatch is lackluster and drowns in its own satire
Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) attempts to keep his bay safe from an impending drug infestation centered around Victoria Leads (Priyanka Chopra) while being an all around loved guy. His fellow lifeguards Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera) and CJ Parker (Kelly Rohrbach) and the new recruits Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario), Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass), and Olympian Matt Brody (Zac Efron) assist in getting to the bottom of this new issue.
This movie suffers from a lot of things. One of the biggest is that the trailers show way too much, which is a recurring problem with studio’s marketing lately. Every funny moment in the trailer is basically every funny moment in the film. If you frequent the theater you’ve seen this trailer dozens of times and thus the funny moments are ruined. The second major problem is the tone of the film. It feels very torn between a serious action movie and the comedy. It’s likely that the action scenes are meant to be satirical, but they don’t feel that way. The result is a film that feels like it misses the mark time and time again.
Johnson and Efron do have some solid chemistry. If they’d played on the buddy comedy a bit more it could have been more entertaining. However, the film focuses on the ensemble element from the TV series and that shortens the time we get with the characters a lot. So rather than have two interesting characters with a complex relationship, we get several underdeveloped characters with slightly less complex relationships. Again, the film misses the mark and feels lackluster by the end.
Final Thoughts…
Baywatch is another disappointing take on rebranding a TV property. It’s writing is probably better than CHIPs, but CHIPs was more entertaining. Neither lived up to 21 and 22 Jump Street. It’s possible that none ever will, but I’m sure the studio’s will keep trying. Baywatch earns the Not a Total Waste of Time rating.
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