“Baywatch,” the big-screen revamp of the cheesy TV show, is due to be released in a few days, but if the reviews are to be believed, it’s not worth your hard-earned shekels. Switching out David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson (who have had cameo appearances shoehorned into the Film) for the promising-sounding pairing of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and a bulked-up Zac Efron and handing the reins over to “Horrible Bosses” director Seth Gordon in order to inject some funny into the typical melodrama has apparently not paid off well. The AV Club said the film is “even emptier than its source material,” and that’s one of the nicer ones...
‘It washes up on the beach like a dead whale’
You can pretty much gather that “Baywatch” won’t be worth £8 of your money, nor will it be worth 116 minutes of your time should you choose to stream it illegally or wait for it to come on Netflix like a good Christian, from its abysmal 18% Rotten Tomatoes score. Anything below 60% is considered “Rotten,” so 18% is like so rotten it’s become a biohazard concern and you’ll need to evacuate in a swift and orderly manner. Reed Tucker, a critic for The New York Post, said of the film, “It washes up on the beach like a dead whale.” Pretty harsh. He must’ve really disliked “Baywatch.”
The Independent’s film critic Jack Shepherd (a different Jack Shepherd from the one marooned on an island in a plane crash who discovered a hatch, a polar bear, a bunch of other weird stuff, and the meaning of life) called out “Baywatch” for attempting to replicate the self-aware brilliance of the “Jump Street” films, but going about it all wrong with “very little intelligence” and missing what made those Channing Tatum/Jonah Hill team-ups “genuinely hilarious.” The unfortunate part about that review is that the “Baywatch” team could technically quote Shepherd without the proper context as using the term “genuinely hilarious” in his review of their film.
He could then try to sue, but when you’re up against a huge Hollywood studio with hundreds of top Hollywood lawyers on retainer, why bother? It’s not worth the legal fees. Whether your quote is properly used, the big-budget action comedy romp starring The Rock, Zac Efron, and some boobs will make ridiculous sums of money either way, so why give them more in an unwinnable lawsuit?
Besides, there’s no shortage of critics’ quotes that make “Baywatch” look like a heap of sh*t no matter what the context it. Irish critic Sarah McIntyre called the film “limp and lifeless.” Would that look good on the poster? Another critic said the film “won’t amuse anybody.” Another said “there aren’t enough laughs and not nearly enough story,” and another called the film “dead on arrival.” Ouch.
A one-star review in Empire contained quotable phrases like “lacklustre” and “titanically unfunny.”
The audience reception hasn’t been any kinder
And this isn’t just one of those times where the critics hate it because they’re pretentious, highbrow critic types; the reviews by mere mortal audience members are just as bad. One wrote that the new “Baywatch” film is “a saddened disgrace of its source material back in 1989 and that isn’t trying to say enough.” The reviews weren’t all bad, though. Most of them were, but opinions are subjective by their very nature. Jack Shepherd believed the attempt to emulate “Jump Street” failed, but Jen Yamato reviewing for The Los Angeles Times called the film “an R-rated surf of winking postmodernism.” So who knows?
Maybe you will like it. If you’re willing to take the risk, you might have fun watching this movie. But if popular opinion dictates how you live your life, save the money and donate it to a children’s charity instead.
