Baywatch Review (2017) – An offbeat, cringe-worthy, confusing and vapid ride that will leave you mildly amused and wondering why this movie was made!

Oh you guys…regrettably we cannot just watch great films all the time…sometimes we find ourselves watching a real stinker. This week’s film to honor the summer solstice is unfortunately just that, a stinker. It is 2017’s movie adaptation of the T.V. show “Baywatch.”

Now, we were hoping that this movie would be so ridiculous, self-aware, and spinning some of the original themes on their head that it would be very fun! We would get A LOT of laughs out of it and real depth! Well…while we did laugh, it was not half as much as we thought it would be and we mostly cringed throughout the entire movie!

Some trigger warnings to be aware of with this movie, sexism, unrealistic body images and standards, toxic workplace, and toxic masculinity. The movie is very fixated on how the cast looks and there is a lot of emphasis placed there. Makes sense to a degree…but it is still concerning and problematic.

Let us mere mortals gaze upon some of the “beautiful” (it is VERY subjective) people! Let’s get started!

The film opens with a beautiful shot of an ocean sunrise and some upbeat music in the background. We start to see more shots of the beach as it starts to slowly fill up with beach goers!

With the sun fully on the beach we see one of our main characters Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson), arrive at a life guard station. He walks into it and starts surveying the beach. Suddenly, the wind changes and he sees someone parasailing on the water.

Mitch dramatically takes off his sunglasses, and leaps off of the life guard station! The poor man parasailing gets swept up by the wind away from his board, slammed back into the water close to an out cropping of rocks where he hits his head.

Mitch bolts down the rocks, with his floatation device and dives into the water! He carries the man out of the water and back onto the beach. We see the BAYWATCH title erupt from the ocean behind him as Mitch, looking like a badass, carries this injured man in his arms like he weighs nothing!

Next we see the injured man on a stretcher being placed into an ambulance. Mitch jogs away and does a long run down the beach. He meets a lot of people on the way that are clearly regulars of the beach and they all seem to worship Mitch. All except the police officer, Sergeant Ellerbee, who Mitch runs into throughout the entire film.

It is a bit odd that these two characters have such an antagonistic relationship, but this whole movie is pretty strange overall.

Mitch is continuing his jog down the beach, everyone seems to know him and he is magically good at everything, which is a bit of an eye roll, but we digress!

As he is jogging down the beach a woman is watching him, she appears to have money by the way she dressed and she is clearly intrigued by him…of course she is! He is a buffly dude running down the beach! What grown woman wouldn’t be! Le sigh. (Dwayne is a handsome man, and the cast is all around as well, but this movie comes across as overly hormonal).

A little boy finds a small plastic pouch of drugs, Mitch gets it away from him immediately and of course also immediately knows what it is! It is a drug called flakka! Why is this important?! Well you see, Mitch is not just a lifeguard, saving lives regularly and keeping people safe…he is also a detective?

Except he’s not…anyway…he gets into a minor altercation with a man named Frankie (Amin Joseph) who is some kind of “bouncer” for a club that is on the beach. The new owner of the club breaks the tension…and just happens to be the woman who was checking Mitch out earlier.

Her name is Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra Jones). They have some awkward flirtatious banter, and she goes back to her club…it felt like the only reason this scene is there is to introduce her character. It honestly did not make a lot of sense, but you meet her and you get strong femme fatale vibes from her.

From there we cut to 2 random guys on the beach that look relatively normal but they are, of course, surrounded by a lot of beach goers that all look like models. As we watched this film, we realized that the filmmakers very clear paid a lot of models to be background people in the film.

There are not a lot of realistic body types within this movie, even in the background! It is a bit trippy and strange. The beach is for anyone and everyone no matter your body type or size.

Getting back to the 2 “average” young men, we close up on them and we see that one of them is flying a drone. Just kind of hovering it, and his friend is complaining about being there. He does not want to be on the beach…but the other young man insists that the being there is “important”.

Well…you probably guessed it, why would he insist on being at the beach with a drone? Because he wants to creep on one of the female life guards who, of course, is named C.J. (Kelly Rohrbach).

She does a slow motion jog back up the beach, and we get the full fan service. She jogs up to them, and says “Hey, Ronnie!”

Ronnie (Jon Bass), the young man flying the drone, is speechless, tongue tied, and behaves like he has never talked to a female a day in his life. We think it is supposed to be construed as cute, but we just found it annoying. It seemed very juvenile for a man his age to be behaving this way around a woman that he finds attractive. Of course, we want to hold space for people who have social anxiety, but the movie doesn’t portray it as social anxiety and more as him being dumbfounded by her beauty.

Dave (Hannibal Buress), Ronnie’s disgruntled friend, is unimpressed, and well…we cannot blame him! Ronnie needs to grow up!

So we have an awkward scene here that went for longer than it should have, but we at least learn that Ronnie is trying out to be a life guard! C.J. is sweet and she is rooting for him! Ronnie just…stares at her.

The camera then pans to a motorcycle driving up to the beach…who is on the motorcycle? Matt Brody (Zac Efron)! He gets off the motorcycle and immediately sees a lovely brown haired young woman with striking blue eyes walking off of the beach.

He tries to introduce himself, but she brushes him off and walks to the Emerald Bay Life Guard tryouts!

We see Ronnie in line, he tried out before and has yet to pass so he is very nervous. He takes off his shirt and gets shamed for having some very obviously fake and oddly placed body hair on his torso. It was really silly. It looked like they put hairy pasties on him…why not just let the actor grow some hair out if it was necessary?

Why did they do that? It was so weird. One of the other men in line start to shame Ronnie for the way his body and body hair look. However, he is quickly shut down by a veteran female life guard named Stephanie (Ilfenesh Hadera). She tells the bully that he will not be allowed to try out because this life guard team is…a family. HARD CRINGE. Any workplace that claims to be family…RUN. The work life balance is atrocious!

Speaking from experience, we have found that workplaces that use this kind of terminology use it as an excuse to overwork and underpay their employees. If you’re a family, then you should want to eat, sleep and breathe this crappy workplace! That is often the implication, and it is never ideal for the workers.

This gave us the ICK!

But! At the same time…we like Stephanie overall and it was nice that she stood up for Ronnie and did not allow the bullying to continue. But, we still got some red flags here.

Matt (Zac Efron) walks to sign up and meets the girl, Summer (Alexandra Daddario), that he was trying to talk to earlier. Here, we get some awkward flirting that’s just weird and not very believable. 

It is fairly clear that this movie was written by a man, but there are some scenes where it is even more evident. This is one of them…but honestly, the writing in this film is not well done at all. Some scenes are worse than others, but as a whole, this is not a well written or well executed film. Moving on!

Mitch walks up to Matt and they start having some weird banter. Matt thinks that he should just be handed the job because he is an “important person” with a note? Mitch is not buying what Matt is selling and tells him he needs to try out. Matt refuses…the whole thing is just a weird dick measuring contest with awkward jokes that makes no sense.

Matt seems to think that because he is a “great” swimmer and has an odd note that means that he should just be given the job? The ocean is an extremely dangerous place…and there is a lot more to being a life guard than swimming, but Matt for some reason seems to think that he already knows everything?

He is rather annoying, and he does not grow all that much throughout the film except by just trying to turn himself into Mitch Buchannon…there is a lack of individuality, real growth and true depth to his character.

We cut back to the beach with Ronnie and Dave grabbing some beers and food. Ronnie has gained some confidence and seems optimistic about his chances at completing the tryouts! Of course, because Ronnie is the designated “average” and awkward character of the film, he starts choking!

C.J. runs up and performs CPR on Ronnie and we get some great shots of C.J.’s ass while she is doing it. Saving a life does not compare to those glutes! Sigh.

She saves him and Ronnie is awkwardly turned on in the process. You would think the pain of choking and the pain of the Heimlich maneuver would prevent this, but this is beyond a nonsense film…it is dumb.

Ronnie develops a…pants issue. As in, he pitches a tent. He is embarrassed and immediately body slams, full force into a wooden slated beach lounger. Why would he do that you may ask?! Because logic! We wish we were making this up…but no, this is what happens in the film and our heads were in our hands.

C.J. is, of course, concerned! That is a bizarre thing to do! He brushes her off, tells her he is fine…she walks away…but of course he is not fine.

He got all of his sensitive parts stuck within the wooden slates of the chair. They are thoroughly lodged in there…and he tries to get his friend to help him. This is where we start to dislike Dave a bit, Dave refuses to help him…somewhat understandable…but what’s better Dave? You helping him or having C.J. who would make the issue worse for obvious reasons?

Or maybe call the cops or the fire department? Do something helpful Dave!

C.J. pops back up because she did not completely buy that Ronnie was ok! She tries to help him…lessen the swelling but is unsuccessful. We keep getting really uncomfortable shots of his junk through his shorts stuck in the wood.

Mitch shows up, and figures out what is going on! He tries to help get the swelling down too…but again they’re ineffective. Spit balling other ideas, they manage to get Ronnie and the chair vertical so that Ronnie is standing. Ronnie falls forward breaking the chair and is able to get out that way…it was very Jackass, American Pie style of humor, which really isn’t our speed.

Anyway! Dave is an awful friend! He is recording the whole thing on his phone and laughing. Why is this a trope about male friendships? Be there for your friends, help your friends, and be good to your friends!

Poor Ronnie crawls away…and we get a cut to the main office for the administrative side of life guarding. Mitch is there to talk to his boss, Captain Thorpe (Rob Heubel) about the drug activity on the beach. Captain Thorpe thinks Mitch is there to talk about Matt Brody, and shows Mitch a bunch of T.V. and internet videos about Matt. He is apparently a “washed up” Olympic swimmer who has won 2 gold medals!

What this has to do with being a life guard on a popular and busy beach…is beyond us! Swimming in a pool (we potatoes enjoy a good pool over the ocean ourselves) and swimming in the ocean…are not the same thing! Is it cool that Matt swims well enough to win gold medals! Yeah! But it is still a weird reason to just hand him a job.

Well, apparently Matt Brody is in some kind of trouble with the law as well and life guarding is supposed to be his “community service.” What?? This is so poorly explained and they never explain further! No mentions of probation or court orders. We never learn more! What??

Essentially Matt is being given this job because he is in some kind of trouble with the law, and he has 2 gold medals for swimming. Mitch is not happy with this which we potatoes agree with, but Mitch concedes. If Matt passes the tryouts he will be hired.

But Mitch is not here for Matt! He wants to get to why he came by, which is to talk about the drug that keeps washing up on his shores: flakka!

Mitch is passionate about his beach and the safety of the people that spend time on it! We can approve of this message, but Mitch does not appear to have a life outside of the beach. He eats, sleeps, and breaths his job which is not the healthiest mindset…and he seems to think that everyone should be the same!

Again…more red flags for a toxic work environment. We all have the right to have full lives outside of work. In fact, it is arguable whether work can even be considered your real life! At work you are replaceable…you are not replaceable to those who love you in your life outside of your work.

In our opinion, real life happens outside of work, and is more important than work. But again like we said, this is arguable! It depends on the individual for sure, but whether you live for your work or not, it certainly not a mindset that should be expected of everyone.

Most of us work to live. We do not live to work. And this is more than ok.

We are going to start wrapping up here, this movie is FAR longer than it should be. Matt manages to qualify for the team. He has some sad shirtless scenes that made us cringe for him. We suspect that he was not allowed to drink water for a few days or so before shooting to ensure that his muscles appeared more defined, and that is awful.

Summer and Ronnie make it on to the team as well! Everyone except for Matt is happy and eager to start training in full to become life guards! Matt is, of course, a rebellious bad boy that does not play by the rules. He has this apathy about him that is very basic and immature. But we digress!

The criminal activity on the beach escalates! Dead bodies start washing up on the shore! Mitch and his team embark on a preposterous mission to uncover the truth and protect their beach! It takes some convincing to get Matt on the same page as everyone else…which is actually reasonable because they are life guards and not police officers…it is a matter of what they have expertise in…but like we said earlier, it is not enough! They have to solve mysteries too!

It is almost too silly and while it tries not to take itself too seriously, yet it still somehow does! The team gets into a bunch of hijinks, ridiculous situations, and trouble trying to figure out what is going on at the beach. It all leads back to a certain club…and a certain club owner…but how? Why? So many questions…that we won’t be answering here without getting a bit too far into spoiler territory!

Overall, while the film tries to embrace the nostalgia of the original TV series, it gets lost in its own absurdity, forgetting to deliver a solid story or memorable characters. Instead, it relies on gratuitous shirtless scenes, bikini-clad young women, and poking fun at the lifeguard clichés we've all come to know.

The fan service is strong in this movie (of course), so if you are into that, then maybe you can overlook the bad writing, etc.…we really struggled with that. We actually found ourselves feeling more uncomfortable with the fan service than we anticipated as well as worrying about the overall health of the cast.

Bodies come in so many different shapes, and sizes! This is completely normal, and a truly beautiful truth about being human that should not only be more accepted but should be celebrated!

To get the kind of muscle definition that we see in this film…well, it requires some very risky methods that can be incredibly detrimental, and uncomfortable. We have some experience with E.D.’s, overtraining, etc. So we have some knowledge on how these things can be achieved. It is a painful process in many, many ways.

Toxic masculinity oozes out of the movie with Mitch and Matt’s behavior as well as overt emphasis on vanity, over musculature, and the whole “work is life” garbage.

Another big issue throughout this entire film, is that the main focus of the film is on Mitch, Matt and Ronnie. The female characters are just there to be love interests and side characters. They are there for the men and they have no real depth. It is disappointing. We felt that the movie would have been so much better if the female characters had been well developed and not just attractive women to compliment, uplift and highlight the men.

This movie did have a few mild laughs at the ludicrousness of it all, the cringe, and the general nonsense. But the film was also oddly boring, confusing, and disappointing.  We highly recommend playing the drinking game for this one!

But if after all of this you are still intrigued by this movie, prepare to dive into a wave of exaggerated muscles, slow-motion beach runs, and absurdity galore! That’s really all you’re getting though! Nothing more! But if that sounds like a good time to you then this is the movie for you!

We give this movie 2 glasses of Sex on the Beach out of 5!

Baywatch Drinking Game

Take a sip anytime:

1.     There's a shot of the ocean/beach

2.     Any main character runs on the beach

3.     There's a lifeguard rescue tube on screen

4.     There's a lifeguard tower or station on screen

5.     There's a slow motion shot

6.     Blatant fan service on screen

7.     Anyone mentions Mitch saving someone's life

8.     Anyone says "Drugs" or "Flakka"

9.     Anyone ogles CJ

10.  Sgt. Ellerbee is snarky with Mitch

11.  Mitch calls Matt a funny nickname

12.  Tiny Mitch is on screen

13.  Matt does something reckless

14.  Ronnie is extremely awkward

15.  There's macho nonsense on screen

16.  The characters do something illegal

17.  The characters try to play police officer

18.  Anything on screen is cheesy or makes you cringe

What did you think?? Did you like the movie? Did you hate it?! Do you have suggestions for films we should watch?! Any and all thoughts are welcome! Let us know here in the comments and always remember to be safe and drink responsibly!