Review of Baywatch (2017) by Kevin F — 19 Aug 2017

Something is happening with the creative minds of Paramount Pictures.

The cohort of people belonging Generation Z, hidden in their homes from litigant summer sun, was "lucky" of witnessing the transmission of a series focused on the adventures-independent in each episode-of the lifeguards of a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, which was on-air a laughable period equivalent to a decade. The main promoter and only beneficiary of real fame thanks to the show-relegating, of course, the sexual symbol in which Pamela Anderson became-, was David Hasselhoff, who created a ridiculous and superfluous succession of feature films and spin-offs in order to keep afloat a TV series that since its beginnings were buried in the mess of simplicity and silliness. A few years later, definitive cessation of audiovisual products on the lifeguard group was declared, however, the satisfaction did not last forever by informing, shortly thereafter, that a powerful Hollywood producer would take to the big screen the underworld of the bay with much younger faces, muscles, and buttocks. It is today when it premieres its homonymous cinematographic idea, a kind of hybrid between 21st- century comical vices and analogies of vacuous modern blockbusters of the forebear decade.

Having as a main culprit the inordinate budget Paramount Pictures bestowed director Seth Gordon-I don't understand why, but it was really surprising to me watching Andy Garcia and Eli Roth as producers on screen-, the film manages to leave, momentarily, the superficiality of robust, suntanned and perfect bodies to tell a joke of criminal story about drug trafficking, which employs a spoof of contemporary action movies while trying to keep a bearable aura by comical gags (moderately funny), ending in a high-calorie recipe, the equivalent of a super comedy production brought to disappointing levels. At present, there are noteworthy works which were released on similar dates and that had the same tone, the difference is that they had solid ideas from its origin, a quick and timely sample: "Spy" by Paul Feig.

They are giving hints of the jolly and trivial tone from the very start, that will prevail in the story with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson emerging victorious from the water with a bather in his arms and the film logo, with emphatic pride, as a backdrop, adding dolphins gambolling-perhaps lacking oxygen among such megalomania-out of the water. I must confess I felt an intense good foreboding in the kind of initial video clip, nevertheless, it fell apart as soon as I watched that the first two names in the opening credits are masculine, explicit significant that some actresses are merely eye- candy, in the same way, the detail of the dolphins provoked that, almost automatically, I took my hand to my head, a disappointing posture lasting at least the half of the extensive almost hundred and twenty minutes. It should be pointed out that this action had a brief lapse of laughter, but, they were so provisional, that I don't remember the causes.

The storyline is as bad as if it were an episode of the series they forgot to transmit on TV. Matt Buchanan (Dwayne Johnson) and his pair of stunning workmates oversee a competition to find new and suitable members of the Emerald Bay life-saving squadron. In parallel, the corresponding subplot is unfolded about a network of criminals who use the beach as a camouflage for narcotics trafficking, with multimillionaire Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra) as the key ringleader. The story honors its source by flaunting big men and voluptuous women in extra small bikinis stammering cheeky jokes.

Neither inherent vis comica of "The Rock", Efron nor rising star Alexandra Daddario manages to consolidate an unambiguous definition for this work from the beginning, and although some of the humorous circumstances, especially those expressed graphically, are quite jolly and acerbic, the lax direction by Gordon, regrettable screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, some word-for-word absurd special effects, raccord detectable mistakes, and the way in which ideas are let out, cause the film to finish as an adolescent, summer, rated-R film prospect with one of the most valued acting teams today, an enviable budget and an audiovisual result, fatally drowned.