If there is one thing that you can say about Baywatch is that it is full of eye-candy. It’s not just one-sided eye-candy, doesn’t matter if you’re into guys or girls, Baywatch has eye-candy for all, so much eye-candy in fact that it’s bound to give you ocular diabetes. Unfortunately though, the storyline and plot points in the movie-adaptation of the cult TV series from the 90’s is also a lot like candy, except it will rot your brain.
So you’ve got The Rock playing Mitch Buchannon, your normal everyday, run of the mill life guard who is just testosterone squeezed into a swimmer’s rashie and when he takes on three new trainee lifeguards which includes Alexandra Daddario as attractive swimsuit model number 3, Jon Bass as chubby comedic relief and of course walking human perfection, Mr. Chiseled-Jaw and rock-hard abs-man Zac Efron. The storyline is, well, what you’d expect from a Baywatch episode: drugs, murder, explosions, and apparently the only people who can stop it all are the Baywatch-crew.
Before I completely bash the film, it should go without saying that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron have excellent chemistry together. They’re both charming, they bounce off each other well and I would definitely pay to see them in a movie together again, but maybe not a Baywatch sequel. The comedy is funny, it’s just a pity that we don’t get anything fresh from the film that wasn’t featured in the trailers.
Unfortunately outside of Zac Efron and The Rock, the rest of the cast are mostly a let down - not because of their acting ability, but just because they have just shy of literally nothing to do. The female leads have nothing to do, often you forget that many of them are there, the male support cast show up randomly and are often there to do short burst of ad-lib comedy, and unlike their bathing suits, none of the characters are really fleshed out. You have Jon Bass as the chubby comic relief and Kelly Rohrbach as CJ Parker whose relationship can only be described as screen-writer masturbatory fantasies of the most unrealistic order - although it’s hard to identify which of the nine screen writers credited to this film is responsible for such limp masturbatory-fantasies.
Outside of this though, the film does struggle quite a bit: firstly, and this is just my nit-picky personality, but the film is just a train wreck of continuity issues - I think the continuity guy on set was too busy inspecting the thigh-gaps and not paying attention to their actual job. The film also has clearly missing scenes along with plot points that are completely forgotten about and are left completely unresolved.
So look, I’d never pick a fight with Dwayne Johnson, however I do know that he said that this film was made for the fans and not the critics. I thought to myself, fair enough, but what does he mean by “fans” - I think people sometimes confuse remembering a TV show existed and being a fan… I know at one point, Baywatch the TV series had a world-wide viewership of a billion people, but I’ve never heard anyone ever clamoring for more Baywatch; I’ve never heard anyone say that they own all the episodes on DVD or that they are glad that they held off for the Blu-Ray anamorphic remastered editions of the series, I think most people would struggle to remember a single storyline from even one episode - the show is not available on Netflix and most young viewers today have never heard of it. I’ve never heard of people cramming into “Baywatch conventions” so while I appreciate that the film was made for “fans” all I ask is, which “fans” are they talking about?
Overall, the film had potential to be good, but it squandered this potential by prematurely ejaculating all of their best material in the trailers. The Rock and Zac Efron are great, but vacuum up all the screen time and charisma of those around them. Some more self-aware humour and saving some of your A-game comedy for the silver screen and taking just a little more time in the editing room and maybe the promise of a sequel during the end credits might have been more welcoming…
Baywatch gets One and a Half jokes out of Five that would have made the film better if we hadn’t seen them across the three dozen trailers and TV spots prior to release.
No comments:
Post a Comment