Following on the heels of “21 Jump Street,” “Baywatch” saddles two hit comedy actors – Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron – to the decaying horse corpse of a 1990s franchise in hopes of reviving IP.
“Street” lucked out, featuring crude but sometimes clever humor, tongue-in-cheek reverence for the source and a strong pair of stars. “Baywatch” has the stars, but everything else about it generally sucks.
I'm a big fan of Dwayne Johnson, both as an action star and a comedian, and for the most part he's in good form here playing Mitch Buchannon, head of the elite Baywatch lifeguard squad. He takes his job too seriously, as we're reminded tirelessly by every other character in the film. Of course he eventually stops a major crime (violently), but his role is more or less picking on hotshot newcomer Matt Brody (Efron), who joins Baywatch as community service. The two have a real chemistry and would rock a good script or story — but those are sadly absent here.
“Baywatch” has no real story; something-something-something land developer trying to steal the beach (Priyanka Chopra as Victoria Leeds) by selling drugs under a boat. It's really just a series of dick jokes with diminishing returns.
CJ Parker (Kelly Rohrbach), Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera), and Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario) are the pretty women who catch your eye on the poster, and there's not much more to them in the movie. Holden and Quinn are the veteran and the newcomer, respectively, but they disappear from most of the major action setpieces; Daddario does get a bit more comedy than the other two actresses but not much more character.
“Dick jokes and eye candy” should be the tagline of the movie — that's what the poster and ads promise — but it's also all this movie has to offer, and not in the ways you'd hope. The jokes just aren't clever enough for more than an occasional chuckle, and eye candy isn't much without some reason to enjoy and care about the characters involved. At two hours, "Baywatch" overstays its welcome by about 90 minutes. If the mere sight of Dwayne Johnson isn't enough to innately bring joy to your moviegoing experience, stay away.