Seth Gordon (director)
Paramount Pictures (studio)
18 (certificate)
119 (length)
25 May 2017 (released)
23 May 2017
When I heard that they were planning on making a movie adaptation of the 90s tv show Baywatch all I could think is why? A show not taking itself too seriously and its main selling point is slow motion shots of attractive women in bikinis and muscular men in shorts saving people from ridiculous and far-fetched situations, surely that has had its day in the sun? But to my surprise it wasn’t that bad.
Much like the show, if you watch it hoping for a serious beach rescue film you are going to be disappointed. It’s just like the TV show where the situations the life guard team gets into only become more ridiculous as the film goes on but saying this I really enjoyed it. It was well aware that it wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece with a pretty weak story but where the story was lacking depth it made up for it with some great scenes between Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron who were easily the stand out performers in this.
Famed Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra makes her Hollywood debut as the villain of the film playing Victoria Leeds. She did her best but there is only so much you can when the part is written like a poor version of a Bond villain.
Now onto the supporting cast. Jon Bass playing an overweight lifeguard who is basically only there to make fun of but Bass does a decent job not to be a complete joke. Alexandra Daddario has her moments but Kelly Rohrbach and Ilfenesh Hadera aren’t given all the much to do in the film and their characters are very one dimensional but they were never bad and had enough about them to not be just eye candy.
This movie really surprised me, I assumed it would be complete rubbish but it was just the right side of stupid and you can tell the cast had as much fun when making it as I did watching it. This won’t go down as a classic but it’s good enough for aSummer comedy and I am sure has a sequel or two planned. As a bonus, for those original Baywatch aficionados, there are even cameos from Pamela Anderson and the Hoff