It’s hard to believe we’re already well over halfway through 2017. When it comes to movies, the first half of any year is generally heavy on blockbusters, comedies, and films that studios like to dump in the early winter months, with more “serious” dramas and other Oscar-bait usually saved until the fall. So far, 2017 has been quite the treat at the cinema, with surprise hits like Get Out and Logan early in the year, and a string of excellent comic book movies like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man: Homecoming proving that the genre hasn’t quite run out of gas. Of course, like any other year, there were also a number of films that, for whatever reason, failed to live up to expectation. That isn’t to say that these movies are necessarily bad, but it’s doubtful that we’ll be seeing any of the following 10 disappointments appear on a list of the year’s best films when all is said and done.
10. Baywatch
Taking old TV shows and rebooting them into feature-length movies shouldn’t work but considering 21 Jump Street and its sequel are two of the best comedies made in the last five years, Baywatch easily could have turned out better. After all, it not only had natural charisma machine Dwayne Johnson as the lead, but Zac Effron as his co-star, who has been having a surprisingly good comedic run as of late with the Neighbors films. Unfortunately, while Seth Gordon’s Baywatch does its best to ape the structure and tone of Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s irreverent Jump Street films, it is nowhere near as funny and never strikes the right balance between spoofing its genre tropes and actually exhibiting those same tropes unironically.
If Baywatch had doubled down on being on spoofing its source material (because let’s be real, Baywatch isn’t a series that deserves much in the way of reverence) instead of just falling back on dick, boob, and fart jokes, we may well have had one of 2017’s best comedies on our hands rather than a forgettable film that largely wastes the talents of all involved.
http://movieweb.com/movie/baywatch/ Source: MovieWeb