"Baywatch": review

L to R: Ilfenesh Hadera as Stephanie, Alexandra Daddario as Summer; Dwayne Johnson as Mitch; Zac Efron as Matt; Kelly Rohrbach as CJ; Jon Bass as Ronnie

I initially thought it might be funny to go from watching a deep and serious film about women like "Women Talking"—seen a couple days ago—to watching a superficial tits-and-ass spectacular like 2017's "Baywatch," directed by Seth Gordon and starring Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Jon Bass, Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Pamela Anderson, and David Hasselhoff. In the end, though, I think I ended up feeling mildly guilty about moving from women-as-subjects in one movie to women-as-objects in another. To be clear, I still laughed a lot. This version of "Baywatch" was set on not taking itself seriously at all, playing out as if it were a light sex comedy made by the Zucker brothers. There are plenty of dick, ass, and hairy-nipple jokes to please the lowbrow crowd, which includes me on most days.

Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon (Johnson) heads up a lifeguard contingent at a Florida beach, and he takes his job seriously. Ably assisted by his second-in-command Stephanie Holden (Hadera) and veteran lifeguard CJ (Rohrbach), Buchannon patrols the sands and the waves, always on the lookout for people needing help as well as for any criminal behavior on his turf. His attitude puts him at odds with his boss Captain Thorpe (Rob Huebel) and with local police sergeant Garner Ellerbee (Abdul-Mateen), both of whom think Mitch should stay in his lane and not do the work of a policeman. This is, in fact, one of the movie's most basic conflicts: Mitch sees the lifeguard corps as the first line of defense when it comes to criminal activity because lifeguards are more likely to see any beach-related crime before the authorities do. More conflict arrives in the form of pretty-boy Olympian Matt Brody (Efron), a selfish and arrogant two-time Olympic gold-medal swimmer who has been placed on Mitch's team as a way to serve out his probation for having vomited in the water during a team relay event. Mitch thinks Matt should try out for the Baywatch team like everyone else who wants to join, but Matt resists. Matt turns out to have a bit of a drinking problem, and he's also homeless, having lost all of his sponsors and his star prestige after the vomiting incident (which earned him the nickname "Vomit Comet"). There's other drama within the team as well: Summer Quinn (Daddario) is determined to gain one of the three open team spots, and Matt has a crush on her. Nebbishy-but-tenacious Ronnie Greenbaum (Bass) also wants a spot on the team, and he's head-over-heels in love with CJ—a 4 setting his sights on a 9 although CJ, as it turns out, may have a thing for Ronnie. Meanwhile, a powerful local business tycoon named Victoria Leeds (Chopra) is trying to buy up properties up and down the beach. People associated with her are ending up dead, and a drug called flakka has appeared in such quantities that Mitch suspects Leeds is somehow dealing the stuff.

I never watched a single episode of the original late-80s-to-early-90s "Baywatch," but I've seen enough video of the slow-motion running of beautiful bodies across white sands to know that the series, originally starring David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, was a thing back in the day. (Both stars make cameos in this movie.) I assume the TV series was a drama with comic elements that was basically an opportunity to show off beautiful beach bodies—kind of like "Burn Notice," which never missed a chance to flaunt tight, firm asses in bikini bottoms. Whatever the original series was like, the 2017 movie was all-in for comedy. Ronnie chokes on a chunk of carrot, prompting his crush CJ to run up and sexily give him the Heimlich Maneuver, resulting in Ronnie sprouting a massive boner and trying to hide it by jumping forward onto a wooden crate, resulting in his turgid junk getting painfully stuck between two wooden slats—probably the funniest gag in the whole film. Straitlaced Mitch and arrogant Matt start off locking horns, but Matt gets repeatedly humbled as he realizes he doesn't yet have the competence to be a real lifeguard—a job that requires more than swimming skills. Matt constantly pursues the initially icy Summer, wearing her down over the course of the film, but this subplot pays off in a hilarious twist when Matt, trapped inside a metal cage and slowly drowning, gets rescued and given mouth-to-mouth by someone who appears to be Summer, only for Matt to snap out of his hypoxic haze and realize with horror who was really giving him mouth-to-mouth. The way that scene played out had me busting a gut. Also surprisingly funny was Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Sergeant Ellerbee. I didn't realize Abdul-Mateen had it in him to be a comic actor: I've only ever seen him in serious roles.

In fact, I laughed through a lot of this movie. I found out later that it had been nominated for several Golden Raspberry awards, including Worst Actor for Zac Efron. "Baywatch" doesn't take itself seriously, and as long as you're okay with that, you'll enjoy the plot. Of course the whole thing is ridiculous, from the bad CGI boat fires to the unrealistic physics of diving, to Priyanka Chopra's overinflated, 300-psi lips (which made her impossible to take seriously). But despite how much I enjoyed the comedy that was there, my writerly mind saw a million missed opportunities—ways for the script to be improved to make for tighter pacing and far better characterization. One interesting choice the story makes is to portray Dwayne Johnson's Mitch as something of a loner—a great team leader, but otherwise a man who lives by himself in a big house, listening to his CB at night. There's a scene in which Mitch and his faithful second Stephanie are snooping around inside one of bad-girl Victoria Leeds's business interests, and they get caught by security. Mitch plays this off by grabbing and kissing Stephanie... and when the danger passes, Mitch releases Stephanie and turns away, but she's obviously flustered and maybe wanting more. Sadly, the moment isn't developed any further in the story: Mitch just goes right back to being his usual stoic self. It might have been nice to give Mitch his own love interest. I also would have completely reworked the underlying conflict about how lifeguards aren't policemen. There should have been some moment when Mitch pleads his case to the police, saying that lifeguards, as the first line of defense against drugs coming in from the sea, should have at least some evidence-gathering authority, thus expanding the definition of the term lifeguard to include the guarding of life in other ways.

I can absolutely see why so many critics hated this movie. It's dumb; it has plenty of jokes that fall flat; it's got a paper-thin plot, and its visuals are devoted to showing off women's naughty bits (although the award for Exposed Genitals has to go to the comical scene involving a corpse's dick, which is on camera for a painfully long time). But at Rotten Tomatoes, there's the infamous "enthusiasm gap": critics scored the movie at 17% ("rotten"), but audiences scored the movie at 61%, enough for a "fresh" rating. I stand with the hoi polloi on this one. The critics know nothing, Jon Snow. "Baywatch" is, ultimately, harmless fun in a frat-humor vein. It's not meant to move your spirit and intellect like "Amadeus"; its only purpose is to let you appreciate rolling waves, female curves, and rippling muscles. If you can live with that, then so can I. Just... don't watch "Baywatch" right after watching "Women Talking."