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‘Baywatch’ Reviews: Dwayne Johnson Strikes Back Against Critics

By Kevin Jacobsen
Published on: 05:07 PST, May 26, 2017

Baywatch has been getting very poor reviews from critics, and star Dwayne Johnson has taken notice.

Baywatch has a measly 19 percent out of 100 on movie critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, with over 100 critics having weighed in. The 2017 movie remake of the classic ’90s TV show is failing to amuse critics, with some observing that the plot is half-baked and the humor isn’t particularly strong. Here’s a sample of some of the critiques of Baywatch thus far.

“What seemed to start off as a winking and benign recycling of the pop culture past has mutated into something far more insidious. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Baywatch — the rare movie that even the Teflon-coated, thousand-watt charisma of Dwayne Johnson can’t save,” Entertainment Weekly explains.

“Even as it adds R-rated language and nudity, ‘Baywatch’ remains as out of touch as an old Playboy party joke. The idea of guys touching other guys (or – ugh – giving mouth-to-mouth) is gross. A scene of Efron disguising himself by putting on a dress is meant to be a laugh riot. It’s not,” writes the Newark Star-Ledger

“The trailers were funny enough to make me look forward to the picture. Imagine my displeasure when confronted with the nearly two-hour full feature, in which the trailer jokes were no longer funny; a full feature with a storyline that an enterprising six-year-old might have thought was a little too rudimentary,” RogerEbert.com states.

“As was the case with CHIPS and The Dukes of Hazzard and The Beverly Hillbillies and Car 54, Where Are You? and I’ll just stop there, when you make films from junk TV, more often than not you’re going to wind up with a junk movie,” declares the Chicago Sun-Times

Meanwhile, other critics were mixed to positive about Baywatch, arguing that it knows what it is as a simple R-rated comedy designed to make the audience laugh.

“What you’ve got is some basic R-rated humor, a few funnies, some tanned, toned bodies and a half-baked plot – nothing more, but maybe a little less. It’s ‘Baywatch.’ What did you expect?” the Detroit News explains.

“Not only owns its dumbness, but hurtles itself all the way back around through a flurry of genitalia jokes and F-bombs to splash unapologetically in an R-rated surf of winking postmodernism,” says the Los Angeles Times

Dwayne Johnson, who plays Mitch Buchannon (the role occupied by David Hasselhoff in the TV show) in the film, has paid attention to the lack of critical acclaim for Baywatch and sent out a few tweets Thursday addressing it.

Johnson also took the time to thank Time Out New York for giving the film a positive review.

There are many cases of regular moviegoers disagreeing with the critical reception of a film, even classics like Patch Adams and The Boondock Saints, two movies that received little love from critics but a warm reception from other moviegoers. There are also instances of fans lashing out at critics for publishing bad reviews of various superhero movies like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice or Suicide Squad.

As seen by some of the replies to Johnson’s tweets, fans who are excited to see Baywatch will be seeing Baywatch regardless of critic approval, while those who listen to critics will likely be staying away.

Baywatch also stars Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Rob Huebel, and Hannibal Buress. Johnson’s Mitch Buchannon is an experienced lifeguard who runs into conflict with Efron’s Matt Brody, a former Olympian who joins the team as a PR opportunity. They discover a crime on their waters and proceed to help determine the cause, with help from Daddario’s Summer Quinn.

Baywatch is in theaters now.

[Featured Image by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images]

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