Baywatch is a tragic drama about a film that should have been a self-aware parody of itself, but audaciously ended up trying to tell an actual story. Instead of being an endless parade of nonsensical explosions and talking fish, it outrageously suggests, with its vague incorporation of things like plot devises and a beginning, middle and end, that I should review it with some degree of sincerity.
Despite having never watched an episode of the original TV show, it was obviously terrifying – with its swimsuit-induced cauterisation of pulchritudinous limbs, horrifying activities like waterskiing, and characters comfortable enough to be topless on the beach. This big screen adaptation is no different. It still appallingly suggests that we can all have fun in the sun together and enjoy each other’s exquisite, tanned bodies. Like the Portuguese.
The Baywatch are holding a series of trials to see which Zac Efron they’ll let onto the team, when a bag of tasty drugs washes up on the beach. The Dwayne Rock Johnson, a ‘bigger and browner’ version of David Hasselhoff, then takes it upon himself to lead a police investigation that the film unashamedly sticks with all the way until the end. Meanwhile, Alexandra Daddario and Ilfenesh Hadera are dragged around by their sentient tits and occasionally get thrown a line, like scraps being fed to the people in Tom Cruise’s basement. Victoria’s Secret model Kelly Rohrbach, however, has the more dignified role, playing the love interest of a fat goblin.
Director Seth Gordon makes the earth-shattering discovery that in spite of modern feminism, tits are still massive. And although it might seem redundant to call Baywatch sexist, its total lack of irony makes it hard to ignore the fact that the women in this are flatteringly decorated broomsticks.
There isn’t even a scene showing the rebirth of Pamela Anderson, who looks like a reanimated corpse.
One out of five.