I Actually Liked Baywatch

I am clearly in the small minority but I actually enjoyed Baywatch (2017). It was goofy, fun, and true to its shitty shitty source material. You can’t make a “good” Baywatch, that would just be an entirely different movie. You can take extremely pretty people, put them in bathing suits, and have them run places.

The pretty people running movie

This movie is extremely meta and I think that’s why people hate it. It is full of characters directly stating “You don’t have jurisdiction here, or anywhere.” And the Rock ignoring it. The Rock, playing David Hasselhoff’s character meets David Hasslehoff, who is also inexplicably named the same thing. They just don’t have the right to do anything and everyone seems to know it. Okay if I’m honest maybe its just because I have a soft spot for Zac Efron (and now a less soft spot for Kelly Rohrbach).

It is hard to find photos of her I am comfortable posting to this blog, but I encourage everyone (regardless of gender) to google this person. Preferably from the privacy of your own home.

The movie begins with a wonderful introduction of the crew:

The main set:

• Mitch (formerly ‘the Hoff’): Dwayne The Rock Johnson, demigod extraordinaire. King of sea and land, bestest human being of all times ever and ever. He also “plays” those things in this movie.
• CJ (formerly Pamela ‘the Bounce’ Anderson): Kelly Rohrback might be the hottest actress I’ve ever seen. In a movie full of attractive people, in an industry full of gorgeous people, she is special. As an actress she is fun, though her character is a bit ditzy (far less of a role than in the original), she seems to enjoy what she does. She might have been terrible, its honestly kind of hard to tell whenever she is on screen.
• Steph Holden: Ilfenesh Hadera is beautiful, confidant, and looks like she could kick ass. Fun in the role, and seems like a good actress. She didn’t have as much screen time as she probably should have, her and Ronnie were on the sidelines for most of it.

The Trainees:

• Brody: (Zac Efron) Mr. Prettyboy himself shows once again that he is actually a good actor. He is funny, he has good timing, he doesn’t mind self-depreciating humor. And for the ladies he still, as Seth Rogan states in Neighbors, “…looks like he was created in a lab by gay mad scientists.”
• Summer: (Alessandra Daddario) gorgeous eyes, great body, not particularly good in any scene that isn’t her mocking other people for staring at her. She is okay comedically, but she has no action/dramatic chops. She does have nice boobs.
• Ronnie: (Jon Bass) His character unironically gives up a compsci/robotics double major and job to be a lifeguard. He is fun, I like him, but A. he shouldn’t be a life guard, B. That’s so fucking stupid, and C. He gets CJ, which is cute, but sacrilege.

 

Varying levels of acting talent, but all nice watch

Honorable mentions:

• Dave: (Hannibal Buress) Hannibal must have decided he didn’t want to be in the movie cause he was set up well then killed off really quick (and off screen).
• Victoria Leeds: (Priyanka Chopra) Fun villain, well acted, pretty. My favourite line “I’m not a Bond villain, not yet anyway.”
• Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff doing cameos as their original characters, alongside the new versions of their characters.

Together they form the dream team. Together they solve mysteries they aren’t authorized to solve, chase bad guys they can’t arrest, and destroy property they are not insured for.

This guy’s job is to sit there and repeatedly tell the Baywatch team that they are not in any way police officers and have no authority to do anything they are doing.

2 things made this movie for me:

1. The Rock refuses to refer to Zac Efron by his characters name, instead making up hilarious nicknames. Confusingly (and wonderfully) this includes “High School Musical” which implies that that movie exists in universe and Zac Efron’s character is just a Zac Efron lookalike.
2. A good chunk of this movie’s plot is dedicated to various characters explaining (as if to a child) how stupid it is to not just call the police. And the Rock stubbornly refuses, insisting that it is part of the life guard mandate of “saving lives”.
   “We had them in custody”
   “You can’t do that, you are just some guys who trapped a bunch of other guys.”

I honestly believe the majority of complaints about this movie are from people unfamiliar with the source material. Of course it’s shit story-wise, its Baywatch. This movie knows exactly how stupid and bad it is, and it has fun with it. I can respect that.

You don’t get anything more out of the movie than you do this poster, but I do like this poster.