Watch Out

Early this year, the movie Baywatch seemed like it might be a bit of dopey fun. But then the critics savaged it, and no one went to see it -- including everyone I know. When it limped out on Blu-ray, though, I began to hear from different friends in different settings: "yeah I just saw that; it was actually kind of funny, better than I expected." So I decided to give the movie a try.

Baywatch is, of course, the film adaptation of the cheesy TV series about lifeguards saving lives and fighting crime in ever-sunny California. Like the 21 Jump Street film adaptation, Baywatch acknowledges the inherent silliness of the premise, leans into it all the way, and plays that for comedy. Also like 21 Jump Street, it embraces an R rating, with all the lewdness that enables. I liked 21 Jump Street, so I certainly think it's a formula that can work. But Baywatch simply isn't as funny.

Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron actually make a fairly decent comic team. Both have a background that likely prepared them for this sort of utterly deadpan comedy. Johnson learned to deliver preposterous dialogue with utter sincerity in the wrestling ring, making him the ultimate straight man; Efron learned similarly to commit to over-the-top singing and dancing for kids in High School Musical. Baywatch is at its best when their two characters soldier through the outlandish without acknowledging it as such (a strain of humor mostly given to Johnson). I feel like Baywatch would have been a decidedly better movie if they'd just gone full "Airplane!" with it.

There's frankly too much plot in the movie, in the form of a central villain with a scheme to devalue land and buy it for a big real estate development. It's not that it's an overly complicated story, but that it takes up too much space because it's too cliche. Though the villain's identity is meant to be a bit of a secret at first (and the primary henchman certainly is), both these revelations can be guessed the first time the characters appear on screen. This wouldn't be a problem if the movie was using these cliches like all the others, as something to poke fun at, but it's instead drawn out for all the drama it's worth. (Which isn't as much as the writers think.)

If I'd never allowed my expectations to get boosted back up after bottoming out, I might have found the movie less of a chore. As originally expected, it's just a bit of dopey fun. Just a bit. There's worse, but there's also much better. I give Baywatch a C-.