Perhaps the greatest surprise that Baywatch offers is that, despite its R-rating, the only nudity in this adaptation of a TV show notorious for bouncing female beach bodies involves a corpse’s penis. What are lifeguards doing snooping around a morgue, you may ask? Well, that’s part of the problem. Although Baywatch presents itself as brashly self-aware in the vein of 21 Jump Street, it can’t commit to a consistent tone of self-parody and squanders its early comedic momentum by sinking under a ponderous drug-smuggling plot.
By directly addressing the fact that lifeguards have no business abandoning their towers to conduct elaborate covert operations, Baywatch sets up an opportunity to go gleefully over the top with some swim-suited wannabe-cops. Instead, it follows a by-the-numbers action-comedy formula and can’t commit to either an earnest or tongue-in-cheek tone. This is especially unfortunate because, in its first act, Baywatch actually flashes the potential to be a lot of fun.
As anyone who’s seen the ‘90s syndication staple already knows, the Baywatch crew is helmed by Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson, stepping in for David Hasselhoff). He’s fearless in his aquatic feats of derring-do, recalling Johnson’s preposterous action-hero cop partnered alongside Samuel L. Jackson in The Other Guys. When cocky Olympic champion swimmer turned pariah Matt Brody (Zac Efron) waltzes across the sand to join the team as part of his mandated community service, he immediately clashes with Mitch and the sparks fly.
The two have a real antagonistic chemistry that fuels the early portions of the film, which involve new-recruit tryouts that, you know, actually take place at the beach. As the heavy-handed plot grows thicker, the crew spends less time saving drowning swimmers and more time stealing secret files or infiltrating fancy parties thrown by the villainous real-estate mogul Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). We get less of the snappy, self-aware dialogue that opens the film, and get bogged down in side plots involving the unlikely flirtation between token schlub, Ronnie (Jon Bass), and bombshell, C.J. (Kelly Rohrbach), or the just-get-together-already interplay between Brody and the initially surly Summer (Alexandra Daddario). Along the way, the filmmakers throw in ill-advised gags like Efron dressing in drag and more than a few music montages.
What’s most frustrating about Baywatch is that it only skims the surface of self-awareness. Early on, there are jokes about C.J. (famously played by Pamela Anderson in the original series) always appearing to move in slow-motion while her skin appears perpetually wet (but not too wet). Outrageous schemes are called out as something you’d see “in a bad TV show.” Not all of these on-the-nose jokes land, but they at least set us up for a flashy farce that never actually manifests. If, for instance, Mitch and his crew were deluded enough to become unhinged vigilantes who make mountains out of molehills, the film could’ve really taken the you’re-not-cops theme to some interesting places. Instead, amid all the glistening skin, requisite chase scenes, low-brow gross-out gags and, at one point, literal fireworks, Baywatch is content to simply tread water.
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