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 Any success among the recent proliferation of films spoofing outdated television series has always hinged on accentuating the kitsch in ways both witty and outlandish.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.

We Are Your Friends

Come on, Wes ... you're going to make us watch

"American Beauty" again?!

Grade: C –

Director: Max Joseph

Starring: Zac Efron, Emily Ratajkowski, Wes Bentley, Shiloh Fernandez, Alex Shaffer, Jonny Weston and Joey Rudman

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

The Scarface poster hanging on the bedroom wall of Cole Carter (Zac Efron) is more than decoration in We Are Your Friends. Swapping the South Florida drug trade for the SoCal electronic dance music (EDM) scene, the 23-year-old Cole is our baby-faced Tony Montana, an up-and-coming DJ hoping to graduate from spinning in LA clubs for free drinks to becoming rich and famous. Cole is mentored by a successful but burned-out DJ, James Reed (Wes Bentley). Meanwhile, Cole has eyes for James’ live-in girlfriend/assistant Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski, filling the Michelle Pfeiffer part).

Cole also has his quartet of bros, who wile away their days partying, ingesting illicit substances and hoping to get out of the San Fernando Valley. They get by thanks to the occasional house-cleaning gig and working the phones for a shady foreclosure shark (Jon Bernthal).

This feature film debut by writer-director Max Joseph is an on-the-nose perusal of today’s Valley of lost dreams, littered with underwater homes and unemployed would-be actors. However, it’s also the movie equivalent of Red Bull and AXE body spray, with its too-cool rendering of youthful exuberance at odds with the milieu’s underlying emptiness.

Wait, wasn’t this film supposed to delve into the EDM scene, popularized by the recent widespread acclaim of DJs like Skrillex and Calvin Harris? Unfortunately, any such exploration is few and far between here. Bentley transcends this admittedly thin script, lacquering complexity onto a two-dimensional role by portraying James as a skilled but boozy talent at odds with his mainstream celebrity. The byplay between Cole and James briefly pulls back the curtain on both the mechanics and subculture of EDM.

But while EDM lore says that the ideal DJ track of 128 beats-per-minute synchronizes neatly with a dancer’s accelerated heartbeat, We Are Your Friends never seems to break a sweat. For a film with the chutzpah to track the plotline to Scarface and a few dozen similar coming-of-age flicks—Saturday Night Fever, for example—it doesn’t have the courage to retain any sort of tragic or even bittersweet denouement, notwithstanding the ornamental death of an underwritten character. Everyone bro-hugs it out as any character conflicts evaporate into an air of chest-thumping optimism. Cole cribs his (rather underwhelming) One Big Track from his ambient everyday. A single mom even gets to keep her home.

“Imitation is suicide,” James warns Cole. If so, then We Are Your Friends is virtually DOA.

Neighbors

Your future is beside you

Grade: C +

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Starring: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron and Dave Franco

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

As the thirty-something couple at the center of Neighbors, Mac Radner (Seth Rogen) and wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) resemble less a satirical portrait of arrested domestic development than an improv comedy troupe with a prop baby and prosthetic mammaries.

Mac and Kelly’s parental everyday of bringing up baby by day and being too tired to party at night is broken when a fraternity house moves into the house next door. Mac and Kelly initially attempt to bond with the frat’s leaders, Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco), over shrooms and shots during an all-night rager. But a mere day later, when the frat ignores their pleas for nocturnal tranquility, Mac and Kelly call the police and draw Teddy’s ire in the process.

An annoyance-off ensues. Alpha dog Teddy—who Mac says has a body that looks like it was designed by gay men in a laboratory—and the rest of Delta Psi trash the couple’s lawn and trim their bushes into obscene topiaries; so, Mac floods the frat’s basement. Teddy steals the airbags out of the couple’s station wagon and plants them around as booby traps; Kelly hatches a plan to turn Teddy and Pete against each other by coaxing Pete to have sex with Teddy’s girlfriend.

The latter is just one of at least three occasions during which Mac and Kelly’s decision to party hearty at the frat leaves you worried for the wellbeing of their child (wherever she is). It’s hard to buy a premise built around parents preventing noise that keeps their baby awake when those same parents periodically leave their baby unattended all night to indulge in bacchanalia with those noisemakers.

It’s also hard to believe that not a single other neighbor on the block calls to complain about a frat that parties loudly virtually every night. But that would resolve the narrative conflict before we get a chance to witness the frat boys strike molds of their genetalia to sell as a fundraiser, or Mac have to milk Kelly’s distended breasts.

The twist, of course, is that instead of the stereotypical upright, oh-so-proper squares, Mac and Kelly are as reckless and flawed as their younger foils. But the more engaging couple is the bromance between Teddy and Dave. While Teddy wants to stay young and wild forever, Dave is gravitating toward the realities of adulthood.

While Rogen and Byrne—quickly becoming the queen of B-comedies—are given the most airtime, Efron and Franco are the surprising standouts. But their efforts, like everyone else here, are squandered on a storyline more grounded in endless bawdy talk and gross-out gags. You expect, even desire a certain amount of that in a Seth Rogen comedy directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). But in Neighbors, it’s just unintended evidence of bad parenting, bad youngsters and a bad movie.

High Musical 3: Senior Year

It's The Corny Collins Show

Grade: C

Director: Kenny Ortega

Starring: Zac Efron, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, and Corbin Bleu

MPAA Rating: G

Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

I write any review of High School Musical 3: Senior Year keenly aware that the big-screen installment of the megawatt Disney Channel movie franchise is utterly critic-proof. The phenomenon flows from the same pop fount as Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, and The Cheetah Girls. But, its ancestry lies firmly in the cardigan karaoke of the 1950s, the Beach Party films of the 1960s, and Fame in the 1980s. In other words, it’s good clean fun, designed to tickle its target audience’s fancy, not its intellect. And, in the grand tradition of cinema, there is nothing wrong with that.

HSM3 is also a sterilized, synthetic depiction of adolescence lacking a scintilla of authenticity or spontaneity – even its junkyard resembles a Disney World theme park. And, its sugary blandness makes its original’s generic Romeo & Juliet motif look edgy by contrast. Shockingly little happens as Troy (Zac Efron), Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens), and the rest of the East High big six matriculate toward graduation and one last musical extravaganza. Oh, Troy and Gabriella cope with possible life apart, Troy tries to decide where to attend college, and four seniors – Troy, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), and bespectacled, virtually AWOL Kelsi (Olesya Rulin) – compete for a spot at Julliard. But, there is not a solitary moment of tension or intrigue throughout, even A Star is Born subplot involving Sharpay’s English understudy (Jemma McKenzie-Brown, one of three new cast members being groomed for the next generation of HSM).

Still, who watches High School Musical for the plot? Here, director Kenny Ortega’s choreography is suitably energetic if overproduced, but the musical numbers are unremarkable. Preteen girls might squirm with glee every time Troy and Gabby coo some teeny-bop ballad in a tree house or a rooftop garden. But, apart of the Evans siblings’ imaginative ode to excess, “I Want It All,” the rest of the soundtrack is replete with poppy retreads. In particular, the otherwise reliable Efron’s solo performance of “Scream” exudes faux-angst reminiscent of an ‘80s Corey Hart music video.

It is easy – and apposite – to poke fun at the HSM construct. But, for those with their head in the game, it is unbridled fun and one small way to escape reality’s challenges. Nowadays, that’s something we could all use.

Neil Morris