Why So Blu?

Baywatch Is Bodacious With Beaches, Babes and Blasts (Movie Review)

If you’re of my generation, who didn’t watch television’s Baywatch growing up?  I mean of course we all watched for Knight Rider‘s David Hasselhoff and beach babes like Pamela Anderson, Nicole Eggert, Yasmine Bleech and Carmen Electra were just icing on the cake.  Sure (wink, wink).  Baywatch is not only part of our pop culture, but like The Terminator 1 and 2 to most people, part of our beloved childhood too.  So when word of a reboot surfaced regarding turning the nostalgic show into a motion picture I feared the absolute worst.  Yes I feared my childhood would be butchered and erased just like 2015’s Terminator: Genisys did.  Ugh!  However, rest assured there was a silver lining in all of this.  Baywatch would unite onscreen two of the hottest comedic stars with some pretty rad beach babes too.  Of course I’m talking about involvement from the likes of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron to the big busted Alexandra Daddario.  What?  LOL.  I don’t know how else to describe her besides those bright, Blu-ray eyes she has.  So I was saying yeah Baywatch….

On paper and other than labeling it a reboot I guess you can call Baywatch a comedy or more like a spoof of the original television show.  It’s directed by Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) and in addition to the three names I mentioned up above it all stars Priyanka Chopra, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Ilfenesh Hadera, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and cameos from David Hasselhoff and the legendary mouth of Pamela Anderson.  The filmmakers even manage to retain the names of the original characters from the television show.  And it’s filmed on the beaches in Miami, FL so that’s always a plus too.  However, you had me at hello with the trinity of Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and Alexandra Daddario.  The former two are on fire in Hollywood and Zac cracks me the hell up in all his comedies he partakes in.  So I guess you can say going into the press screening Baywatch already had a lot going for it…at least for me.  It can’t possibly be CHIPs remake bad can it?  

So like I was saying on the television show you have the likes of Mitch Buchannon (Johnson).  He’s the leader of the elite Baywatch lifeguard squad, which at first is comprised of C.J. Parker (Rohrbach) and Stephanie Holden (Hadera).  The man is basically a God to beach locales.  In contrast you have Mitch’s yang, new recruit Matt Brody (Efron).  He’s a former Olympian, washed-up pro athlete forced into the squad by Mitch’s boss as I guess a PR opportunity.  There’s some fun and games there as Mitch goes out of his way to physically and mentally prove to Brody he doesn’t have what it takes to be on his elite squad.  However, hark who goes there?  When a dead body is recovered from the ocean, the two must put aside their personal differences to work with alongside the other Baywatch team members to stop a criminal mastermind’s drug trafficking operation.  Let’s just say the Baywatch squad takes the laws into their own hands and in the process we have a lot of laughs as Mitch’s team evades the police and tackles the seemingly impossible, taking down nightclub owner Victoria Leads (Chopra) and her thugs.

Up above I compared Baywatch to the other television reboot movie, CHIPs, which also came out this year.  That’s not really a fair comparison because I have yet to experience CHIPs myself, but I hear it’s atrocious and I’ll probably spare myself from it.  I just mention it because they’re both reboots of famous, culture bending television shows.  So I’ll just say this.  I feel like Baywatch paid respectable homage to the television show that came before it while at the same time staying true to the raunchy comedies of the Judd Apatow world we have been living in the past ten plus years.  I say that with love and respect because Apatow has a way of being raunchy, but also very heartfelt at the same time.  Expect much the same with Baywatch here from the jokes, gags and even an extended penis scene, but unlike an Apatow movie I didn’t feel my heart being tugged nearly as much.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but it does to me.  Outside of the bikinis, beaches and babes on display I’m trying to paint a vibe of how Baywatch feels when watching it.  Of course you can expect plenty of over-the-top action sequences, stunts and really bad special effects.  The latter mimics the limited budgets television shows of this kind used to have, and if you’re not an HBO show most still do.

All in all I had a fun time with Baywatch.  Yes some of the jokes and gags were forced, old and tiresome, but the new ones really worked thanks to not only The Rock and Efron, but also out of shape Jon Bass who plays Ronnie, C.J.’s love interest.  He’s the saving grace of this film as his sequences are over-the-top spectacular and gut busting funny.  I would have loved to see more rivalry and chemistry between Efron and The Rock, but rest assured there’s enough testosterone to go around here.  Remember like I said up above Mitch is a God to the locales and he embodies that.  Now I don’t know how you feel about this next statement, but holy hell does Efron’s ripped physique put the Rock’s body to shame.  He is frickin’ cut!  Of course the beaches and various babes are beautiful too, but it’s the boring storyline and subpar acting that keeps Baywatch in the water for me never allowing me to have ultimate land loving fun with it.  Then there are those cameos.

So there are two cameos to speak of here, that of Baywatch television alums David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson.  The former was real, acceptable and true for me, but the latter felt as fake as she looked.  It’s sad too because I used to have the biggest crush on Pamela Anderson and knew of her from her early Playboy days before she took to the knife and wound up on television’s biggest show, Baywatch.  She looked like a plastic doll in this.  Even the shoddy special effects in the film look better than her.  It was a forced cameo, and it will be interesting to see her involvement should a sequel get green lit.  And that’s just it despite my nitpicks I still managed to have a swell time with the elite lifeguard team and I wouldn’t mind a second outing with them.  However, your mileage may vary.  I’ll also spare you any credit torture.  There’s nothing after them, but rather some gags and flubbers running ate beginning of them.  Hope you enjoy!  Thanks for reading.