By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Priyanka Chopra, Kelly Rohrback, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jon Bass, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Rob Huebel, Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff.
Rating: Poor.
Seth Gordon, Director of “Horrible Bosses” and “Identity Thief” brings “Baywatch” and my first statement is: It Couldn´t Get Any Worse.
Based on the Television Show from the early nineties, the movie centers on Lt. Mitch Buchanan (Dwayne Johnson) a lifeguard who protects the beaches of Florida with his second-in command Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera) and C.J. Parker (Kelly Rohrback).
During the upcoming tryouts, Buchanan will meet Matt Brody (Zac Efron) a cocky Olympic Two Time Gold Medal Swimmer who will do anything to get on his nerves, Summer Quinn (Alexandra Dadario) a smart and tough girl who wants to join the team and Ronny (Jon Bass) a tech nerd who has a crush on C.J.
One day Buchanan finds out about a plan that involves Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra) a wealthy owner of a Club that uses her business for drug smuggling. Not only Leeds has this plan but wants to take total control of the land that involves the beach so she can expand her operation
Buchanan will recruit his team and trainees to stop Leeds on taking total control of the beach and bring her to the authorities before it´s too late.
When I watch this movie I felt that I was seeing an exact episode of the tv show but with a longer version of course. The movie is too bad that yes I do think that it was made on purpose to be bad.
The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift was poorly written. There are moments that the movie is funny but most of the time is too vulgar that stopped being entertaining.
The action sequences look to fake and there is an amount of CGI used in them that are very bad executed and some of them didn´t make any sense.
I knew this movie was going to be very dumb but they are limits. On the other hand if you compare it with the tv show, by far this is more entertaining.
Seth Gordon is director that knows the comedy genre too well and movies like “Horrible Bosses” which is a good example of a funny film. The problem is that Gordon also focused to much on the action and one of the problems that I saw in this film is that you think is a comedy but has action in it. In other words the genre is not defined and that is a major problem.
Another positive note is that both Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron are very likeably actors but here the chemistry could have been better if the screenplay would have been written properly.
For fans of the show you might like it or you might hate but honestly don´t get your hopes to high.
“Baywatch” is one of the worst movies of this pre summer that is about to begin and I cannot possible recommend it.