Baywatch (2017)
Directed by Seth Gordon
Devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchannon butts heads with a brash new recruit. Together, they uncover a local criminal plot that threatens the future of the Bay.
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27 films that influenced Baywatch
What critics say influenced Baywatch
Taking lessons from 2012’s wonderfully silly 21 Jump Street (in which Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill scientifically proved that bad television need not result in bad filmmaking), Baywatch owns its preposterousness with every barked line of self-serious dialogue and stuffed-to-bursting wet suit.
Unlike the great movies based on TV shows, Baywatch never decided if it was making fun of the show like The Brady Bunch Movie or 21 Jump Street, or celebrating it like Mission: Impossible or The Fugitive.
If “21 Jump Street” is the high bench mark for contemporary comedy adaptations of cheesy ’80s and ’90s TV shows, hilarious and irreverent in its deconstruction of its own template, then “Baywatch” at first appears to be aiming for the same design.
Baywatch wants to be 21 Jump Street (the movie, not the TV show) so badly.
After 2012’s 21 Jump Street proved that the formula of “take a cheesy, decades-old TV show and adapt it into a self-aware action comedy” can bear brilliant fruit, studios have been trying – and failing – to replicate its success.
His thing is such that it causes him some physical discomfort in a long, drawn-out, unfunny “stuck junk” bit half adapted from “There’s Something About Mary.”
Imagine a version of the classic scene in There’s Something about Mary where Ben Stiller gets his penis stuck in his zipper except it’s in no way funny, and you have idea of the level Baywatch is operating at.
Ronnie’s penis incident pales in comparison to There’s Something About Mary because there’s no surprise.
The writers of Baywatch, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, have been responsible for such slasher-film retreads as the 2009 Friday the 13th and Freddy vs. Jason .
Screenwriters Mark Swift and Damian Shannon cranked out the "Friday the 13th" reboot and "Freddy vs. Jason."
That sting lingers, and Baywatch has just enough going for it to make its ultimate failure feel like a botched attempt at C.P.R. Coming from a plethora of writers, including screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the two minds behind Freddy vs. Jason and the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th , this film has no idea what it is, the tone it would like to strike or who it has even been made for.
Director Seth Gordon (2013's " Identity Thief ") and writers Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (2009's " Friday the 13th ") check these boxes, then proceed to make the project their own.
The picture’s pumped to the max – coming from the same “bigger is better” Beverly Hills Cop II school of anti-reality Tony Scott perfected for Jerry Bruckheimer.
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But those movies also had Chris Miller and Philip Lord, a writing team of unusual cleverness and heart ( The Lego Movie , The Last Man on Earth ).
It was also an L.A. crime series where the law enforcers wore spandex swimwear; a cheeseball star vehicle that revamped the camp-stud Ken-doll mystique of the former “Knight Rider” hero David Hasselhoff; and, yes, an entry in the oxymoronic genre that started a decade before with “Charlie’s Angels” — the prime-time jigglefest.
Viewed as what it also is?a fleet-footed action-mystery, one part "Scooby-Doo" and another part "Charlie's Angels"?there are plenty of pleasures to be had.
The comedy follows the formula of many other films based on TV procedurals (think “Starsky & Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “21 Jump Street”) by taking a winking approach to the original show’s signature moments.
21 or 22 Jump Street, it ain’t.
In its commitment to envelope-pushing raunch, Baywatch seems to be trying to capture the magic of 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street , the rare film adaptations of a junky TV series that succeeded in finding their own tone of weird subversive humor.
Thanks to the comic genius of The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, though, both 21 and 22 Jump Street were wonderfully funny flicks that balanced crude and clever humour.
Even the inevitable sequel, "22 Jump Street," was funny.
It’s while running an “American Ninja”-esque obstacle course shirtless to prove his lifeguarding chops that many of Efron’s talents take center stage.
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Unlike the great movies based on TV shows, Baywatch never decided if it was making fun of the show like The Brady Bunch Movie or 21 Jump Street, or celebrating it like Mission: Impossible or The Fugitive.
If a scene featuring a cross-dressing Zac Efron in an industrial kitchen gives you flashbacks to Good Burger, it’s not a great sign.