The big-screen version of the much loved TV show stars Dwayne Johnson as Mitch Buchanen, the chief lifeguard at Emerald Bay in Florida. When cocky, but disgraced, Olympic swimming gold medallist Matt Brody (Zac Efron) is foisted on Mitch, his rash actions threaten to scupper Mitch’s investigation into drug running at the beach.
As a TV series, Baywatch passed me by. I don’t think I saw a whole episode, so my knowledge of the programme is limited to clips of nubile women running in slow motion. I wasn’t therefore in a position to be annoyed by any liberties taken by the film, or get the in jokes.
Fortunately for me, the latter were pretty unsubtle! The humour is pretty broad throughout, with a peppering of dick jokes, though I didn’t find those as aggressive or uncomfortably unfunny as in most frat boy comedies. Enough of the gags hit the mark, with particular fun to be had from the insults Mitch throws at Matt.
The two have a good chemistry and Johnson, against the odds, has turned himself into a decent comic actor, but they also dominate the film to an extent that the rest of Mitch’s team make very little impact. That’s a shame in the case of Alexandra Daddario as Summer, who doesn’t get the chance to show her acting skills, but probably a good thing for Kelly Rohrbach who is very bad as CJ and Jon Bass who fails to get the attempted laughs as the schlubby Ronnie that CJ inexplicably falls for.
Despite an unnecessarily long running time, nearly 2 hours when 90 minutes would have suited the story more, there are enough laughs and a nice awareness of how ridiculous the concept of lifeguards solving crime is to make it a nice watch on a rainy weekday afternoon.
Rating: 6 out of 10