Movie Breakdown: Baywatch

Pre-Screening Stance:

Baywatch looks like it was modeled after the very successful (and funny) 21/22 Jump Street flicks.  That’s exciting.  Hopefully it cracks me up.  If it doesn’t, I guess I can just stare at the very pretty trio of Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and Alexandra Daddario.

Post-Screening Ramble:

There’s not much to like about Baywatch.  Mitch (Dwayne Johnson) is a detective/good samaritan/water lover in charge of Baywatch, a group of … lifeguards who watch over a … bay.  Annually, because previous employees get new jobs (or drown, maybe), his team holds a competition to accept a new member.  The tryout is meant to find ONE new co-worker, but because this movie is cluttered and generally doesn’t make a lot of sense, three are selected to join the crew.  These chosen ones include a bad boy former Olympian named Matt Brody (Zac Efron), the Baywatch-ready Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario) and the all-heart but out of shape and very dorky Ronnie (Jon Bass).  If you haven’t already guessed, Ronnie is the lovable goof, Summer is the moral compass and Matt is the guy who has to get yelled at and shamed a lot by Mitch so that he can learn to appreciate being a part of Baywatch.  They’re all shallow characters who never have a memorable moment on the screen.  Thankfully (but not really), the film has more at play than inter-team dealings, and it’s a whole other muddled plot about a lady (Priyanka Chopra) trying to force-ably attain real estate to build a shopping mall or something.  And she sells drugs, too!  Because why not!  Like I mentioned, this thing is a real jammed up mess.  My guess is that someone made the decision to just throw everything at the viewer to hide the movie’s extreme lack of laugh-worthy bits, but who knows for sure.

Don’t watch this sloppy, hollow, unfunny and eternally long film.  Find anything else to do.  Unless you just really like bad dick jokes, I guess.

One Last Thought:

At some point The Rock is going to have to dial back and go for more of a quality over quantity approach with his roles.  The guy is seemingly in everything, and most of it is forgettable garbage.