Baywatch

Beloved lifeguard Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) heads up a team known as Baywatch in Emerald Bay, Florida who run trials for new recruits on an annual basis. Buchannon's boss puts considerable pressure on him to admit Matt Brody (Zac Efron), a double Olympic gold medalist who badly damaged his reputation due to an unsavoury incident at the Games. The arrogant Brody consistently acts recklessly, much to Buchannon's chagrin. But the two must join forces with the rest of the team to shut down a drug ring.

I have a lot of time for Dwayne Johnson and he gives it his best shot here with an underpowered script. His consistent boyband related ribbing of Brody yields decent returns, including an on the nose reference to one of Efron's previous enterprises. Efron is ludicrously ripped but needs to do more than simply be eye candy, even in a film set in the summer at the beach. I feel like I've seen him play exceedingly similar characters in various things for the past five years and he needs to push himself into more interesting projects. Priyanka Chopra does alright as the sub-Bond villain of the piece, whilst Ilfenesh Hadera, Kelly Rohrbach and Alexandra Daddario are underultilised as the female members of the team.

There's some puerile nonsense, some meta jokes about the original series, the obligatory cameos of the original stars and some utterly ludicrous nerd guy wish fulfillment but Baywatch didn't offend my sensibilities. But it was neither comedic enough for a comedy or incident packed enough for an action film. This movie could have been so much worse than it ended up, but that's scarcely a reason to recommend it. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that I need more from Hollywood comedies than I'm currently getting.