Beach blanket bozos
TEDIOUS: Big-screen Baywatch drowning in lowbrow gags
Like nearly every studio comedy in recent memory, Baywatch is leaden, tedious, mirthless and nondescript.
There are a half-dozen screenwriters credited and here is what they managed to devise: a brawny career lifeguard, played by The Rock, teams up with a disgraced Olympic swimmer, played by Zac Efron, and together they investigate a nefarious Indian-American country-club owner, played by Priyanka Chopra, who rules a narcotics-smuggling empire and aims to privatize the public beach where our investigator/lifeguards work.
The Rock’s character is written as the Good Cop who plays by the rules, only sometimes he doesn’t, and it’s never clear from one scene to the next whether he’s meant to be the force’s voice of reason or the loose cannon who needs to be reined in. Efron, meanwhile, portrays both the level-headed all-American Adonis and a dimwit in the style of Derek Zoolander.
The mismatched comic duo fumble through madcap beachside exploits, none original, amusing, nor delightful. Much of what purports to be humour here, not surprisingly, is lowbrow in the extreme, though dressed up as knowing meta-commentary.
A movie this idiotic, this short on creativity and ideas, is in no position to sneer at David Hasselhoff trotting down the beach on our TV screen. At least that foolishness was in earnest. To be so dumb and also ironic is the far graver sin.