Baywatch

One of these things is not like the other

Grade: C –

Director: Seth Gordon

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Priyanka Chopra and Hannibal Buress

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 59 min.

Stuck between a Rock and a hard place, Baywatch is a parody in search of a purpose. Any success among the recent proliferation of films spoofing outdated television series has always hinged on accentuating the kitsch in ways both witty and outlandish. It’s why 21 Jump Street, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the first Brady Bunch movie worked, while most of the rest did not.

The main conundrum facing director Seth Gordon’s Baywatch is that it’s hard to lampoon source material already grounded in cheesy narratives and conspicuous exploitation. Baywatch suffers an identity crisis: it can’t decide whether it wants to be a straight reboot or a R-rated bawdy comedy. It ends up trying for both and accomplishing neither.

There are drugs being smuggled into Emerald Bay by a voluptuous and dastardly land developer (Priyanka Chopra). So it’s up to Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) and his titular lifeguard squad to solve the mystery and save the day. The superhuman Mitch has 500 saves during his lifeguarding career, earning the adoration of beachgoers who build sand castle effigies in his honor. We’re told repeatedly that Baywatch is an elite life-saving unit whose rigorous qualifications may even be too stringent for newbie Matt Brody (Zac Efron), an Olympic washout who arrives with two gold medals around his neck and a plea deal that requires community service. The rest of the film’s opening act revolves around Ronnie (Jon Bass), the resident portly dork. Ronnie receives the Heimlich maneuver from curvy blond lifeguard C.J. Parker (Kelly Rohrbach) and gets his junk stuck in a beach chair, a horry Farrelly brothers-style sight gag that’s as dated as the “Baywatch” TV show. So, it’s the height of plot contrivance when Ronnie’s inexplicably one of only two recruits chosen from dozens during Baywatch tryouts.

It’s an endless string of beach bods and boob jokes as Mitch and co. track down the baddies while getting pushback from the local authorities. Meanwhile, Matt’s self-destructive recklessness puts him at odds with Mitch. Their alpha-male flexing produces Mitch’s running gag of emasculating Matt with monikers like “One Direction,” “N’Sync,” “Bieber,” “McDreamy,” and, of course, “High School Musical.” But any promising punchlines are quickly beaten like a dead seahorse. Others, like Matt having to inspect a corpse’s taint after they sneak into a morgue, are just tasteless.

Even Johnson’s considerable charisma can’t save this waterlogged caper held together by neoprene and bad CGI. Cameos by a couple of actors from original TV show only remind us of the sad consequences of chemical abuse/enhancement. Drowning in a sea of mirthless futility, Baywatch isn’t worth saving.

Bereavement

You. It's What's for Dinner

Grade: C

Director: Stevan Mena

Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Michael Biehn, Spencer List, and Brett Rickaby

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 43 min.

If Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were to inbreed, their ghastly spawn would closely resemble Bereavement. No horror trope goes unexploited, from the emotionally scared youngster to the derelict slaughterhouse to the comely damsel in distress whose articles of clothing are inversely related to the buckets of Kensington Gore being sloshed about.

Writer-director Stevan Mena’s latest splatterfest is a prequel to his 2004 debut Malevolence, a former fave on the horror film festival circuit. Whereas Malevolence takes place ten years after the kidnapping of youngster-turned-psycho killer Martin Bristol, Bereavement backtracks five years in order to wallow in the CIP-sufferer’s grisly apprenticeship under his gonzo captor, Graham Sutter (Brett Rickaby).

For reasons that are never explained, Sutter has also been abducting and butchering young women in and around the sleepy borough of Minersville, Pa. for years without arousing any suspicions. Indeed, when 17-year-old Allison (Alexandra Daddario) moves to town following the death of her parents to live with her uncle Jonathan and aunt Karen, they make nary a mention of the dwindling maiden population before Allison takes up jogging alone down secondary highways. Indeed, Uncle Jon (Michael Biehn) seems more distracted by Allison’s flirtations with William, a motorcycle-riding rube, than the fact that she might end up on the back of a milk carton.

Unfortunately for Allison, stupidity proves genetic. When she trots past Sutter’s Meat & Poultry Plant one day and spies a young boy standing in a broken window, she doesn’t call the police, child protective services, Uncle Jon, or Batman. Instead, the horror gods dictate that she venture in alone, setting off a chain reaction of climactic carnage.

Despite Mena’s stated desire to develop an emotional connection with the characters, they are essentially cardboard cutouts existing purely to fill predefined functions. For most of its two-hour running time (Mena’s original cut was reportedly over three hours) the narrative oscillates back and forth between Allison and her travails with tepid teen angst, and Sutter and his interminable, hollow rants directed to his late father’s apparition and a mounted longhorn steer skull (you read that right).

Bereavement pays off with an audacious finale that sates the audience’s bloodlust, even though it’s capped by the worst crime scene investigation this side of The Usual Suspects. Mena’s knowledge and dedication to the horror genre is earnest, but how much value is there in being a poor man’s Eli Roth?

Neil Morris

Originally published at http://goo.gl/cJdtI