Sea of mediocrity

Baywatch

STARRING: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario

DIRECTOR: Seth Gordon

Genre: Action/Comedy

Rating: 15

RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes

Let’s face it, people tuned in to Baywatch for more than a decade because it sold a fantasy and not for the lifeguard instruction. It was a poorly-scripted version of the American Dream: white beaches and bronzed beauties like Pamela Anderson running around in super slow motion.

As this high-profile reboot splashes onto the big screen, it’s a shame that director Seth Gordon has failed to update the fantasy. Baywatch still relies too heavily on a gratuitous aesthetic that just doesn’t wash in 2017.

When The Rock can’t even save your movie, you know it’s bad. He is lifeguard lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, played by David Hasselhoff in the original series. With the reputation of Buchannon’s lifeguard team in desperate need of a PR boost, Zac Efron swoops in to save the day as would-be Olympic swimmer and full-time bad boy, Matt Brody.

The film’s first half comprises Buchannon routinely ribbing Brody in an attempt to teach him how to be a team player. And, it’s mostly charming; Johnson and Efron are a charismatic pairing and the former delivers outrageous one-liners which are fairly hilarious (for all of 10 minutes) until they wear thin.

The second half sees Buchannon and Brody go undercover to expose a drug operation masterminded by Priyanka Chopra’s knock-off Bond villain, Victoria Leeds. Yet, this sharp narrative turn feels so unnecessary and far-fetched that it borders on farce. At one point we see Efron in drag for no reason at all, and the age rating will surely alienate anyone young enough to sit comfortably through this kind of mildly offensive slapstick buffoonery.

The women of Baywatch are given very few lines, and when they are, their jokes are basic and crude. To be fair, they have thankless, almost interchangeable roles as love interests and swimsuit models.

Kelly Rohrbach plays the Pamela Anderson character CJ Parker, though this is a generous description. The swimwear couture hasn’t moved on since the 90s, either: cut so high at the hip you wonder if there was a lycra shortage.

Ladies aside, Johnson possesses the wit and comic timing to carry most of the weight of this shambolic film, but he doesn’t quite manage to keep it afloat singlehandedly. Indeed, when the film abandons him for a large chunk of its runtime, the jokes aren’t half as funny.

Some gags do hit their mark, such as Johnson mocking Efron for his ‘boy band’ look, but on the whole Baywatch wastes it’s A-lister cast on a lukewarm premise.

It also seems like a lot of the film’s budget was spent on the cast because some action scenes are dripping in bad effects; one scene involving a fire on a boat is particularly terrible, and I had to wonder whether the filmmakers made it look purposely bad in an odd homage to the small-screen budgets of the 90s. But probably not.

Before seeing Baywatch, I felt like the whole thing had a lot of promise but unfortunately that’s hidden behind stagnant comedy which has been sold to us under the cheap guise of something recognisable from 25 years ago.

Save your money, this isn’t worth the Hassel-hoff.

Showing at: Novo, Cineco, Seef II, Wadi Al Sail, Saar, Al Jazeera, Dana, Mukta A2

Rating: 1/5