Cinemazlowski Double Review: “Baywatch” and “Dead Men Tell no Tales”

May 30, 2017

Hollywood has been having a hard time coming up with original ideas over the past several years. With countless superhero movies, reboots of old ideas and franchises putting out their umpteenth sequels, it's a rare treat to find a movie that actually has some inventiveness.

This week sees the release of a particularly dire entry, as the feature-film adaptation of the legendarily stupid 1990s TV hit "Baywatch" hits the big screen and fails to entertain on any level, while adding heavy layers of unnecessary raunchy humor.

At the same time, Johnny Depp sails in to save the day for families and anyone who enjoys good, mostly clean fun with his latest adventure as Captain Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales."

Following the vapid adventures of a group of Los Angeles lifeguards, "Baywatch" inexplicably became the most-watched TV show in the world, with a weekly audience of more than a billion people for 12 seasons starting in 1989. That maddening fact is no doubt what drove Paramount Pictures to bring "Baywatch" back to life on the big screen this weekend.

The new incarnation teams Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron as lifeguards with clashing styles in an attempt to add a layer of ridiculous, self-knowing comedy to the slow-motion running, skimpy outfits and ocean heroics. Johnson replaces David Hasselhoff in the lead role of Mitch Buchannon, who almost immediately finds that a slickly packaged baggie of a new illegal drug has washed up on the beach, and wants to find the source.

But before he can launch his investigation, Efron shows up as a new, impossibly buff and incredibly stupid guy named Matt Brody, who was a two-time Olympic champion swimmer before an embarrassing televised incident in which he vomited in a pool and kept swimming. Mitch's boss Captain Thorpe (Rob Huebel) thinks having an Olympian on the squad will be great publicity for the Baywatch team and orders Mitch to add him without the required physical tryout.

Brody's cockiness clashes with Mitch's attempts to take the job seriously, and results in a nonstop parade of pretty-boy insults from Mitch that generated only one big laugh from the audience. Meanwhile, a pudgy loser named Ronnie (Jon Bass) is added to the team due to his sheer determination, setting up a series of awkward encounters with his lust interest CJ (Kelly Rohrbach) that are embarrassing for both his character and the audience to endure.

The Baywatch gang ultimately set its sights on new local club owner Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra) as their chief suspect, as bodies start to pile up. The scenes where she appears to act nefariously with her henchmen and victims feel like a live-action version of a "Scooby-Doo" villain, ensuring "Baywatch" doesn't have one second of suspense or mystery along the way.

What it does have is a constant jarring clash of tones, veering wildly between slow-motion action scenes and incredibly vulgar attempts at laughs that aren't able to be described in a Catholic/family setting. There are also at least 60 uses of the "F" word, plenty of crass sexual innuendoes and a surprisingly gruesome end for the villain. Thankfully, the audience at an early screening met the movie with silence, providing hope that there are still some standards for what audiences will find funny these days.

Meanwhile, the latest "Pirates" marks the first film in six years for that series, and a welcome return to form for Depp, whose movies have mostly bombed in the interim. The new edition opens by following Henry, the son of Captain Jack's old sidekicks Will and Elizabeth, as he attempts to free his father from the curse of the Flying Dutchman.

The curse forces Will to forever ferry the souls of the dead, living apart from his son and his wife, Elizabeth. Henry thinks Poseidon's trident, which holds power over the seas, can break the curse, and despite his father claiming nothing will help him, Henry tracks down Captain Jack years later and enlists his help in finding the trident.

The two run afoul of a ghost zombie ship led by a ghostly Spanish captain named Salazar – a long-ago enemy of Jack – and his equally undead crew. They meet a gorgeous astronomer named Carina, who has a book written by Galileo that she believes has the clues needed to find a mysterious island that holds the trident.

After Henry helps Jack escape a guillotine and Carina escape hanging after being wrongly accused of witchcraft, the three team up to find the trident. Jack believes it will help him discover treasure, while Carina hopes it will help her find her long-lost father and Henry aims to break his father's curse.

Yet Captain Salazar and his crew are also in hot pursuit of revenge against Jack, teaming with Sparrow's other longtime enemy Captain Barbossa to bring him down. The resulting race against time and the wilds of the sea make for a richly entertaining adventure that most can easily enjoy.

As always, Disney keeps the pirates' language squeaky clean, aside from some occasional innuendoes, and the swashbuckling action and inventive stunts are played for excitement and laughs. That combination keeps the movie from being bloody or seriously violent, though Captain Salazar and his menacing crew might prove too scary for kids under 10.

Of course, Jack is frequently drunk, but this is also portrayed in such a cartoonish fashion that it's impossible to take seriously. A big and surprising plus this time is the strong themes of family and forgiveness that arise through the quest to free Will and Carina's determination to find her own father, and an equally surprising and moving change of heart by one key character.

All told, the new "Pirates" is a winner for just about any age, while "Baywatch" drowns. Don't let yourself get pulled down with it.

|