Review of Baywatch (2017) by Andrewburge — 08 Jun 2018

From the beginning, Seth Gordon's 'Baywatch' is a difficult film to watch, but not for the reasons you might think. It involves dozens of unnecessary cuts, its soundtrack changes from one mediocre frat boys party anthem to another, and I am not even going to mention the continuity issues which, of course, are a sin which permeate most films, even great ones. But here they are too many and too obvious.

There definitely is a deep message about teamwork, dedication and overall life lessons in this film, but unfortunately is hidden deep under its poor execution. To be more specific, the biggest issue here is the characters, which are written with cliche personalities like your devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson), hot-shot Olympic pretty-boy Matt Brody (Zac Efron), nerdy tech savvy awkward teenager Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass) and your pretty girls Stephanie, CJ and Summer (Ilfenesh Hadera, Kelly Rohrbach and Alexandra Daddario). But it does not stop here. It feels as if the film misses the way it wants you to report to each characters. While Brody is supposed to be the black sheep of the group, he often seems as a voice of reason, being the only one mentioning calling the police when Baywatch's own Scooby-Doo gang wants to save an again clichee white collar criminal plot led by an again clichee seductive and dangerous corporate woman, Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). Also, you cannot help but feel that Mitch's ridiculous ambitious dedication and his machismo bravado make him feel like a psychologically scarred vigilante going beyond his reach to protect the beach, kinda like a Batman only... without the cool gadgets and brooding personality. Not to even mention the montage scene in which, after he gets fired, works at an electronics store. It is cringe worthy and laughable... just like his too numerous heroic acts of life-saving which get tiring quickly.

There is a good part though, which this film nails really well. That is the references to the original Baywatch series. It seems that Gordon understands that the heart and soul of these references are more important than their number. There are like-able cameos by David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson and nice parodies to the infamous slow motion scenes. Unfortunately there are also many jokes which are simply misses due to poor execution and worse, they are often prolonged, like when Ronnie stuck his genitals between two wooden planks of a sunbed and also the overall lame writing of Leeds' only two mobsters. Seriously, you thought she would have like a whole mob.

Overall, 'Baywatch' does not make an effort into complicating itself. Yet it also fails in coordinating its simple plot to the point in which discontinuity becomes part of the plot continuity! Like the scene in which Brody is held hostage by Leeds but he escapes through 'clever' editing and a firework display caused by Ronnie when he saw a 'big red button' as he immediately proceeded to... flip the switch right next to it. I really wanted to like this film. I could get over the cliche characters and linear plot, but not over the inability to manage its simplicity.