Baywatch arrives as a 2017 action comedy with a famous name, a big cast and a strange idea of what to do with both. Seth Gordon directs from a screenplay by Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, working from a story credited to Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. It runs 116 minutes. It is based on the television series created by Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz and Gregory J. Bonann, and it sits in the same fictional universe as that show.
The film’s tagline is “Don’t worry, summer is coming.” It premiered in Miami on May 13, 2017, and Paramount Pictures released it in the United States on May 25.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
Mitch Buchannon and the Emerald Bay Team
The premise is simple on paper. Dwayne Johnson plays Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, a beloved member of an elite lifeguard division called Baywatch in Emerald Bay, Florida. His team includes second-in-command Stephanie Holden, played by Ilfenesh Hadera, and veteran C. J. Parker, played by Kelly Rohrbach Walton.
They protect the beaches and the bay. Against them stand a jealous beat cop, Sergeant Garner Ellerbee, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Mitch’s superior, Captain Thorpe, played by Rob Huebel.
Mitch finds a small pouch of flakka near the Huntley Club, which is owned by the powerful businesswoman Victoria Leeds, played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas. That pouch is the hinge the whole film swings on.
Matt Brody, Ronnie Greenbaum and Summer Quinn
Zac Efron plays Matt Brody, an entitled Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer who expects to make the team without trying out. Mitch and Brody compete in a series of physical tests, and Mitch wins.
Then a woman and her two children fall into the water. The lifeguards and Brody rush to save them. Brody makes the team, along with Ronnie Greenbaum, played by Jon Bass, and Summer Quinn, played by Alexandra Daddario.
A private yacht catches fire. Baywatch evacuates the occupants alive except for city councilman Rodriguez, played by Oscar Nunez, who dies. Mitch and his team keep investigating, to Ellerbee’s disapproval. They infiltrate the hospital morgue and learn Rodriguez was murdered.
The team hides and takes a video of Leeds’ henchmen planting an autopsy report to cover up the murder. They are discovered. The recording is destroyed. Thorpe threatens to fire Mitch if he oversteps again.
A Drug Plot Behind the Huntley Club
Convinced Leeds is running drugs through the Huntley, Mitch and Brody go undercover and watch drugs being pulled from barrels of fish. They contact Ellerbee and learn another dead body has been found on the beach.
Thorpe, enraged that Mitch deserted his post, fires him. Brody is named the new lieutenant, though he does not want the job, and is forced to take it. Brody later sees beach thieves, called “sand grifters,” steal bags using a cooler.
That is the shape of the thing: a lifeguard procedural that keeps reaching for a crime story and never quite grabs it. The film has a drug lord, a murder, a cover-up and a morgue break-in, and still feels like it is treading water.
The Cast List Is Longer Than the Jokes
The film stacks names. Hannibal Buress plays Dave the Tech. Amin Joseph plays Frankie. Jack Kesy plays Leon. Belinda Peregrín plays Carmen. Pamela Anderson appears as Captain Casey Jean Parker, and David Hasselhoff appears as The Mentor.
| Performer | Role | Function in the film |
|---|---|---|
| Dwayne Johnson | Lt. Mitch Buchannon | Team leader, drives the investigation |
| Zac Efron | Matt Brody | New recruit, rival turned partner |
| Priyanka Chopra Jonas | Victoria Leeds | Huntley Club owner, the criminal target |
| Alexandra Daddario | Summer Quinn | New team member |
| Jon Bass | Ronnie Greenbaum | New team member |
| Yahya Abdul-Mateen II | Sgt. Garner Ellerbee | Beat cop, opposes Mitch |
| Rob Huebel | Captain Thorpe | Mitch’s superior, fires him |
| David Hasselhoff | The Mentor | Legacy appearance |
| Pamela Anderson | Captain Casey Jean Parker | Legacy appearance |
Two of those names are there to salute the show. The rest are there to carry a plot that keeps splitting its attention between the team and the case.
From Florida to Savannah, and Into Theaters
Principal photography began on February 22, 2016, in Florida and Savannah, Georgia. The gap between that start and the release was more than a year.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| February 22, 2016 | Principal photography begins in Florida and Savannah, Georgia |
| May 13, 2017 | Premiere in Miami |
| May 25, 2017 | Theatrical release in the United States by Paramount Pictures |
The budget was $65–69 million. The film grossed $177.9 million worldwide, a commercial success by any plain reading. That number is the strongest argument anyone can make for Baywatch.
The Number That Matters
Baywatch earned five nominations at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture and Worst Actor for Efron. The published critical score is 3.7/10, with Metacritic at 37/100.
That split is the whole story. The film was a commercial success and it drew negative reviews, and the two facts are not in conflict. A $177.9 million gross on a $65–69 million budget is one measure of the film. Five nominations at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards and a 3.7 published score are another.
The problem is not the cast. Johnson is built for this kind of role, and Efron has the right comic timing for a recruit who thinks he has already won. The problem is that the crime plot with Leeds never earns the screen time it takes, and the film keeps handing its best material to the lifeguards and then pulling them back to shore.
The morgue sequence and the fish-barrel discovery are the film’s best ideas, because they push the lifeguards somewhere they do not belong. Then Thorpe fires Mitch and hands the lieutenant job to Brody, and the movie resets itself. That is a stall, not a turn.
The legacy cameos from Hasselhoff and Anderson are the honest part of the film. They admit what Baywatch is: a nostalgia delivery system with a crime story bolted on. The tagline sold summer. What arrived was a long one.
3.7 of 10.
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