Baywatch: Naa, that’s not what we wanted

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, David Hasselhoff, Cody Martin

Rated: 4/10

Wasn’t Baywatch always about certain portions of the woman anatomy than about any kind of crime and chase thrillers? That’s the way it should have remained because more the world matures, more it moves back into serenading, well, woman anatomy on the big screen, especially when it is localed around a beach, sea and some Sunday fun in the summers.

The latest edition of Baywatch, hijacked from the now aged David Hasselhoff by none other than muscle rippling Rock, is a muddle much like the beach and sea conditions during monsoons. It does not show enough of anything, not even skin as a true blood Baywatch franchise should have, and gets rather too complicated with fallen heroes, drugs, corruption and jurisdiction issues that are too commonplace for a Baywatch title to get stuck into.

Come to think of it, the film is more Bollywood than Hollywood when it comes to all the fisticuffing and brawling and this is not just because one Ms Priyanka Chopra has managed a meaty role in the film.

As the villain selling drugs, expanding her criminal empire with unadulterated corruption and killing people by the drop of her champagne glass, she does make a mark but despite all the swagger, the drawl, the accent and the beestung lips highlighted as never before, she is still a sidekick in a film which ripples more on Rock’s muscles than on the buxom beach beauties it was always meant to.

On the whole, this one is a boring take on an era gone by and is so bored with itself that is is compelled to evoke the romance of Baywatch by bringing in a wrinkled Hasselhoff and a much over the age Pamela Anderson in two-second roles to somehow save the inevitable sink of lax direction, slim storyline and inadequate dressing up of the scene, so to say.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 4 June, 2017