[Baywatch] won't make anyone think about anything, except maybe about where to plan their next vacation where they, too, can run in slo-mo on the sand. But, with everything else going on in the world these days, that may not be such a bad thing. 
 
 May 31, 2017 | Rating: 3/5 ||||| Other than some slo-mo self-parody, the film discards any real connection to the titillatingly cheesy television series that inspired it. 
 
 Words you can’t say in prime time are lobbed frequently and jokes based on male nether parts are extended to excruciating effect. 
 
 Director Seth Gordon seems to have decided to go full gonzo — as in outrageous and tasteless — and the result is an ideal movie for immature, socially maladjusted males and their long-suffering girlfriends. 
 
 The plot is equal parts slight and ludicrous. Head lifeguard Mitch Buchannon wants to bust a drug ring operated by Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra), the owner of an adjacent resort, to save the unspecified “bay” he keeps watch over. 
 
 (Yes, many, many remind him that he’s only a lifeguard, to little avail.) ||||| No one is expecting Oscar-level material here, but ‘Baywatch’ can’t rescue itself from a puddle 
 
 Ilfenesh Hadera and Dwayne Johnson star in the action drama “Baywatch.” Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario and Priyanka Chopra also star. (Photo: Paramount) 
 
 “Baywatch” was only ever about red swimsuits and slow motion shots of lifeguards running on the beach. Somehow that was enough to sustain 11 seasons of television. But it’s not enough to carry two hours on the big screen. 
 
 The rebooted, R-rated “Baywatch” wants to wink at the cheesy series while also delivering the very things that made it a worldwide hit in the 1990s — and for awhile, it works. Then the fun deflates like a beach ball with a hole in it, and viewers are stuck asking, “Well, it’s ‘Baywatch,’ what did you expect?’ ” 
 
 The simple expectation is a project that can poke fun at its source material, but use it as a base to deliver something fresh, like “21 Jumpstreet” with suntan lotion. The reality is a little more stale. “Baywatch” wants to be smart-dumb, but winds up being dumb-dumb, a great beach body with nothing inside its brain. 
 
 Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as Mitch Buchannon, the head lifeguard at Baywatch, who treats his post at the local beach as a cross between a sheriff, a community leader and an ambassador for his stretch of sand. He and his team — which includes Kelly Rohrbach as C.J. Parker and Ilfenesh Hadera as Stephanie Holden — are “the elite of the elite,” as Mitch explains, and does so with a straight face and courage in his conviction. 
 
 The crew holds tryouts for new members and attracts Matt Brody (Zac Efron), a washed-up, self-absorbed former Olympian turned national disgrace (think Ryan Lochte), as well as strong-willed surfer type Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario) and schlubby comic relief Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass). Greenbaum, who comes off like a grating, seventh rate Josh Gad, is seen failing miserably at the tasks required of him during his tryout, but makes the squad anyway. Elite of the elite! 
 
 Still, for awhile — say, the first 30 minutes or so — “Baywatch” strides along with confidence. The Rock and Efron have a playful chemistry, with Mitch chiding Matt for his teen magazine good looks (he calls him a long list of boy-band names) and the two going after each other for the size of their respective muscles. (Efron somehow looks more ripped than the Rock, no small feat of body engineering.) 
 
 And the movie has some fun acknowledging the legal authority (or lack thereof) of a team of lifeguards, who act like CSI agents on their stretch of the beach rather than hired hands who save kids from drowning. 
 
 Then an actual plot kicks in, one involving drugs on the beach, corruption among local politicians and shady business dealings, and it’s like sand getting kicked in your face. Director Seth Gordon (“Horrible Bosses”), working from a script credited to six contributors, winds up in a trap of making “Baywatch” about something more than “Baywatch.” You want to blow your whistle, strap one of those buoys to your body and rescue the movie as you see it drowning. 
 
 Another bummer: The surprise of the film’s cameos from original “Baywatch” cast members are undercut when their names are listed in the opening credits. 
 
 So 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? 
 
 agraham@detroitnews.com 
 
 (313) 222-2284 
 
 @grahamorama 
 
 ‘Baywatch’ 
 
 GRADE: C- 
 
 Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity 
 
 Running time: 119 minutes 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2qTN8AG ||||| (CNN) A "Baywatch" movie needn't be high art -- its TV inspiration certainly wasn't -- but did it have to be this inane? Crude and silly, searching for the laughs in this R-rated comedy is the equivalent of scouring the beach with a metal detector looking for lost items. 
 
 When the credits finally roll, they include outtakes in which the actors flub lines, and, tellingly, even those aren't particularly funny. 
 
 Granted, with its leering camerawork and absurd crises, the series that thrived in syndication was practically self-parody at its height. Yet one would think that director Seth Gordon and a team of writers could at least have more fun riffing on its quirks, which they try to do with jokes about women looking as if they're running in slow-motion and the fact these lifeguards behave like cops, even though they're not. 
 
 For the most part, the movie has been shaped into a kind of buddy comedy, one seemingly designed to put the appeal of Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron to the test. The only consistent gag, in fact, has Johnson insulting Efron with various teen-heartthrob nicknames ("One Direction," "High School Musical"), and even those begin to hit the low-tide point well before it's over. 
 
 Johnson plays Mitch Buchanan, Emerald Bay's head, who is forced to hire Efron's Matt Brody, a disgraced Olympic gold medalist being brought aboard as a PR stunt. Beyond saving drowning kids, they're dragged into a nefarious plot involving a wealthy club owner ("Quantico's" Priyanka Chopra) who is importing drugs using her beachfront establishment as a front. 
 
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– Apparently Baywatch should have stayed off the big screen. Though audiences appear to mildly enjoy director Seth Gordon's big-screen revamp, giving it a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, critics are drowning it in bad reviews for a 19% rating. Here's what they're saying: "A Baywatch movie needn't be high art—its TV inspiration certainly wasn't—but did it have to be this inane?" asks Brian Lowry at CNN. He claims you'd have about as much luck finding a lost item buried in sand as you would finding a laugh in this movie. As for those beach babes, they're "skimpy compensation to justify a water-logged trip back to the beach that, the Rock notwithstanding, sinks like a stone." It works for the first half-hour or so thanks to Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson's "playful chemistry," but then it starts to drown. And sadly, "Baywatch can't rescue itself from a puddle," writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. It "wants to be smart-dumb, but winds up being dumb-dumb … a few funnies, some tanned, toned bodies and a half-baked plot." But then, this is Baywatch. "What did you expect?" Yes, it's "lightweight, a tiny bit crude and a trillion grains of sand away from anything approaching realism. But it's also a lot of fun," Stephanie Zacharek writes at Time. The jokes—which are, perhaps surprisingly, not made at the expense of female characters—are "plain dumb," but still generate a laugh, she writes. Plus, it's hard not to enjoy all the beautiful people. "You could do worse," Zacharek concludes. Bruce Demara wholeheartedly disagrees. This is a movie for "immature, socially maladjusted males." For everyone else, "even sand in your shorts would be less annoying," he writes at the Toronto Star. There's no true connection to the TV series, the plot is ridiculous, the scenes are too long, and the actors … well, Efron "is just plain bad," and even Johnson is "not particularly appealing," Demara writes. "Give this one a pass."