9) Baywatch
There’s a scene in Friends where Chandler Bing – who’s besotted with Baywatch – tries to encourage his new roommate Eddie to watch the beach-based drama series alongside him, to no avail. “It’s just a bunch of people running around on a beach, ya know”, Eddie tells Chandler.
Sure, Eddie ultimately proved to be an utter fruitcake, but his scathing assessment of Baywatch remains bang on the money. The TV series was about as deep as a paddling pool, and that’s what makes it so difficult to conjure up any kind of real excitement for the upcoming movie adaptation.
The plot involves a criminal conspiracy threatening the wellbeing of an LA beach, and it’s up to Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson), and his team of racy lifeguards (Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rorbach) to foil the ploy and save the sands. Sounds innocent enough, right?
Seth Gordon is in the hot seat – a man with a diverse but decidedly erratic filmography – and he has a tough task on his hands to make Baywatch watchable. Whilst leads Efron and Johnson have both demonstrated exemplary comic timing in the past, they have also looked equally lost when they’re left to wallow in subpar material. The laughs simply won’t happen on their own – and Baywatch’s success will hinge on the strength of both Gordon’s direction and Damian Shannon and Mark Swift’s script.
Crowds are sure to get a kick out of the sculpted and voluptuous half-naked bodies of the attractive stars, but will there be any kind of substance below the painfully vain surface?
We can only hope, but it ain’t looking good.