Review- Baywatch

Baywatch is... It's tricky. My love for The Rock is well known and powerful and at this point, I will go and see just about anything he does. Plus, I love the Jump Street movies, self-aware remakes of a cheesy show from the nineties. On paper, this film should be a complete win but it isn't that simple, even if the jokes are. I'll start with the plot which I shouldn't have to focus on with a comedy, but here we are. Dwayne Johnson and a few women who are there to look attractive are the lifeguards on a beach and they have some recruiting trials for new lifeguards. One such recruit who they are forced to take in is Zac Efron as an asshole swimmer with two gold medals and righteous abs. They all have to work together to work out some kind of drug problem that's leading to a lot of dead bodies turning up on the beach. The plot is there and it's never sure if it's just a vehicle for jokes or wants to actually be taken seriously so it ends up as a clunky mix between the two. Do your best to ignore the plot.

The actors in this film really do try to give good performances and for the most part, they keep this movie afloat. The heart of this film (and the ruler of my heart) is Dwayne Johnson and tear the film apart all you want, he does a great job. He delivers lines with charm, his smile lights up the screen and his banter with Zac Efron is pretty entertaining. Speaking of, the former High School Musical star gets given an arc in this film and while you never truly believe it, he plays as a good foil to most of the jokes. His love interest is Alexandra Daddario, a really beautiful actress who I really want to see as a great actress too and... This film won't sell that. Pretty much of the female characters are objectified (especially Kelly Rohrbach who is there to eventually make out with the fat guy who got his dick stuck in a deck chair) but on reflection, I think that's okay. The film is silly and doesn't attempt to get involved in gender politics and when the male leads are the muscular double team of The Rock and The Zac, the men are equally objectified too. As one final point though, Hannibal Buress (a real, actual comedian) is in this film for about five minutes and criminally underused. Directors, please put him in more films and for longer.

So, it's a comedy. That means this is the bit where I talk about the jokes. That's not easy. First off, it's not totally unfunny. I laughed out loud quite a few times and walked out feeling fairly upbeat. The problem is that the film is two hours and comedies shouldn't be that long unless they have a good reason. What a running time like that instead of ninety minutes means is that jokes go on much too long. You know how someone getting their dick stuck in a deck chair is kind of funny for a moment? Imagine that it's five minutes long instead, with no sense of escalation other than more shots of the dick. Or don't imagine because that's in the film, you can see it. The overall comedy either goes into that area of R-rated "boundary pushing" or self knowing, ironic, winking humour where it's funny because this used to be a TV show. Some of it hits, not all of it does but I think everyone will find a little something. It just would have been nice if they targeted one demographic more specifically.


Baywatch is nowhere near as bad as people are saying it is but it's not as good as it should be or thinks it is. Dwayne Johnson deserves better and he has had better this year in Fast and Furious 8. You can go see this and that would be fine but there is better stuff on right now (the Wonder Woman review is next week and spoiler alert, it's better). Still, it has some redeemable features, which is why I give it a