The movie Baywatch made its way to the big screen in 2017. It's an R-rated comedic reboot of the beloved 90s television phenomenon. Baywatch stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the legendary Mitch Buchannon and Zac Efron as the disgraced Olympic swimmer Matt Brody. The film brought along with it a dose of modern humor into the familiar premise.
The film opens with Mitch Buchannon, the devoted head lifeguard of Emerald Bay, performing a heroic rescue when a lady accidentally drowns in the river. It was quite an open scene to begin with. His team includes Stephanie (Ilfenesh Hadera), the kind-hearted and stunning C.J. (Kelly Rohrbach), and (Jon Bass). Most of the movie scenes were centered around the beach.
Things somewhat get disrupted by the arrival of Matt Brody, a gifted but arrogant swimmer forced into community service with Baywatch. Mitch and Brody had a hard time getting along at first. Mitch saw Brody as reckless while Brody saw Mitch’s duties as a lifeguard to be beneath him. I was just hilarious how Mitch kept calling calling Brody ‘Highschool musical’, making a reference to the actual film simply because Zac Efron starred in it.
The movie gives a bit of a twist as it deviates from typical beach rescues into thrusting the lifeguards into a more action-oriented narrative. They uncover a criminal conspiracy involving a ruthless real estate mogul, Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra), who is smuggling a new synthetic drug onto the beach and attempting to buy up property to control the bay. It just seemed to me like they were kind of trying to blend the film with a modern, "21 Jump Street" comedic action formula.
Dwayne Johnson delivers his usual charm and physical comedy, and Zac Efron commits fully to the role of the arrogant but ultimately redeemable Matt Brody. Priyanka Chopra did her best on her path as playing the villainess role in the movie. It's actually the first time I've ever seen her act along that line and it wasn't really bad.
I found it really impressive that the film became a commercial success, grossing $177.9 million worldwide against a budget of $65–69 million. The film managed to find an audience, likely drawn by the star power of Johnson and Efron, and perhaps it aroused the curiosity of people given the "Baywatch" name.
I found Baywatch as a movie that had all the ingredients for fun. It has its downsides for sure, but they were overshadowed by the good ones. I give Baywatch 7/10. If you haven't checked it out you'll be doing yourself a favor by doing so.
