Baywatch 2017 * 1/2 Stars

Director: Seth Gordon
Year: 2017
Rated R
Rating: * 1/2 Stars
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario

Have you heard? It's a trend. First with March's CHiPs and now with Baywatch (my latest review). Yeah I'm talking about two hard, R-rated comedies that have almost nothing to do with the television shows they are based on.

Baywatch, with its banal outtakes and self-satisfaction at the end credits, is basically CHiPs but with a little less vulgarity. Both flicks have cameos from their former series stars, both have visible penis gags, and yup, both films are pretty freaking stupid. The cheesy, opening titles sequence says "with Pamela Anderson" but she has about five seconds of screen time (and a little reconstruction to boot). Then it says "and David Hasselhoff". He makes a slightly better impression. Hey, at least Dave's not appearing drunk on YouTube with double cheeseburger in hand (ha-ha).

Anyway, Baywatch the movie is not really predicated on saving lives in the water. It's more like a jovial Miami Vice episode by which the tanned lifeguards uncover a criminal operation involving hard drugs. I guess that makes sense. Otherwise, there would be nothing gravitating to fuel Baywatch's surprisingly long, 116-minute running time.

In between leads Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson flexing their jagged abs (Efron is clearly headed towards appearing in this kind of piffle forever), you get flagrant jokes and innuendos that just fall flat. Listen, I like stupid humor and grossness if it actually makes me laugh. With Baywatch, I only chuckled once. Talk about slack writing with the addition of passive character development by Mark Swift and Damian Shannon (as a pair, they mostly pen horror films).

In conclusion, if you decide to view Baywatch, you'll get clips involving slimy corpse drippings and full frontal nudity in a morgue. Also, you'll experience an abundance of slow-motion running (of course), incredibly fake CGI fire in a rescue scene, plenty of annoying hip hop tunes as background music, and a main villain that clearly looks like a Kardashian (ugh). In truth, 2004's Starsky and Hutch and 21 Jump Street are films based on TV shows that did it better and with more jocular tones. See them instead. Bottom line: Don't make an effort to "watch" Baywatch. Natch.

Written by Jesse Burleson