Lady MacBeth

LADY MACBETH

** SPOILERS **

"She is a disease!" rasps Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), the hapless, beguiled groundskeeper, when he fingers his lover Katherine (Florence Pugh) as a murderess most foul at the conclusion of director William Oldroyd's maliciously spellbinding Lady MacBeth. Based upon the novel "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by Nikolai Leskov and not something some guy named Shakespeare wrote, Katherine, the "heroine" of this sordid, bloody tale of murder in the manor is Lady MacBeth in kindred spirit only. Kindred spirit by means of body count.

Pugh delivers an increasingly unnerving and mesmerizing performance as Katherine, who is sold along with her parcel of land to a loveless marriage. Her sole duty in this arrangement is to provide an heir; otherwise she can shut up and be part of the furniture for all anyone cares. The extent of her new husband Alexander's (Paul Hilton) willingness to consummate their marriage is to make Katherine disrobe and then turn and face the wall like she's in the shack of the Blair Witch. Then he hits the hay, apparently satisfied.

Katherine, however, is not satisfied by her exceedingly vacuous life of being wrenched into a corset and then sitting silently for hours in an empty house in Northern England. She yearns to make her own decisions and do what she wants. She has simple desires: a little sex, for starters. Oh, and to be rid of her husband and his cruel, domineering father Boris (Christopher Fairbank), who also hate each other. When both men depart on separate business trips, Katherine decides she rather likes being the sole lady of the manor, and starts laying down plans to make this arrangement permanent. Katherine's behavior unfolds haphazardly and with real malevolence she feels is justified, regardless.

Sebastian the groundskeeper thinks he's rather cleverly seduced Lady Katherine when she starts taking him to bed every night, but the poor sod is in way over his head. When Boris returns from his business trip, having heard all about Katherine spreading her legs for the hired help, he beats and imprisons Sebastian. Katherine has never seen a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, but her revenge would fit right into any episode when she decides to start killing to eliminate her impediments. By the time Katherine's done, her body count is very impressive: two men, a child, and even a horse. The horse was especially hilarious; Katherine had never shot a rife before, and the kickback flings her backwards like she's a cartoon character. 

All's well that ends well for Katherine. It's quite a body count for a bewitchingly ruthless young lady.  Thing's don't go quite as well for Sebastian, who is racked with guilt and has the temerity to betray Katherine. His reward for confessing is being hauled off to the hoosegow, along with "his accomplice" Anna (Naomi Ackie), the hapless maid who goes mute from all ghastly murder she's had to clean up after. Poor Anna; she's the most befuddled domestic servant in a movie since Harry Osborn's butler in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy: "I've seen a lot of strange things in this house, sir!"

Spider-Man: Homecoming

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

** SPOILERS **

Welcome home, Iron Man! We missed you! Oh shit. Wait. Let me start over: Welcome home, Spidey! We missed you! (There. Do you think Mr. Stark noticed, Blog Lady?)

For most True Believers and Web Heads, it's been 13 years since we had fun watching a Spider-Man movie. Director Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming, the loving product of six writers and the Marvel-Sony Alliance, brings the Amazing Spider-Man home to the Marvel Cinematic Universe where he belongs - and where the fun is. No longer isolated away from his superhero playmates in his own universe where he toils and suffers as its only superhero, Homecoming shows us a Peter Parker the way he was originally conceived by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko: as a high school kid growing up in Queens, New York in a world where the Avengers exists and he can interact with them. Keen to not make the mistakes of its five predecessors starring two other Spider-Men, Homecoming goes out of its way (to Washington, DC, even) to show us a Spidey doing things and fighting bad guys we've never seen before. Hopefully, Mr. Stark is impressed.

Homecoming amusingly catches us up with how Peter Parker (Tom Holland), a la his own web vlog, was recruited by Tony Stark to fight on his behalf in last year's Captain America: Civil War. We see a different side of the conflict between #TeamCap and #TeamIronMan in Berlin; through the wide-eyed excitement and naivete of the young Spider-Man. For a 15 year old kid who doesn't have a driver's license and had never left the country, being flown around on Tony Stark's private plane (no stripper pole this time) was exciting and intoxicating. No wonder upon returning home to Queens, his normal life of being the smartest sophomore at Midtown Technical High School feels lacking. Peter can't wait to blow out of those halls, don his brand new StarkTech suit, and right wrongs (and get yelled at a lot) as the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (catchphrase coined and trademarked by Tony Stark, thank you very much). Peter also can't wait to report his every activity to Tony's stressed out right hand man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), hoping he gets the call to hang out with the Avengers. The waiting is the hardest part, so the song goes.

Holland is a Peter like never before; the youngest, brashest, funniest Spider-Man we ever did see. His sense of duty to do the right thing and help out the little guy is endearingly intact. His motivations are unlike any previous iteration of Spider-Man in a movie: Homecoming, to it's credit, only references Spider-Man's famous origin in the briefest way, and we are not subjected to seeing Uncle Ben shot and the pathos that ensues, for the third time in a decade in a half. Every one knows how Peter becomes Spider-Man. What's interesting is what's lost when the Uncle Ben is thrown out with the bathwater: the reaffirmation that Peter does what he does because of the lesson that "with great power comes great responsibility." Peter articulated a version of this to Tony Stark in Civil War, which is why Tony brought him on board. In Berlin, Peter's motivation to fight was "to impress Mr. Stark." In Homecoming, that hasn't changed at all. Peter's sole goal is to shed his humdrum life and become an Avenger. Slinging webs and fighting crime on the ground are just his training wheels, but he needs that training more than he knows.

In his well-meaning blunders and haphazard investigation into a crime wave involving stolen alien tech in Queens, Peter discovers a weapons trafficking operation run by Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton). Toomes ran a salvaging operation to clean up New York City after the battle seen in the finale of the first Avengers movie, but Stark took his living away from him by establishing his own Damage Control operation through the government. Toomes began stealing technology and scrap left in the wake of the Avengers' many battles (parts of Ultron in Solokvia, weaponry from the Triskelion in DC, etc.), refurbishing the scrap as weapons, and selling them to the black market. In his way, he's as industrious as Tony Stark, if his personal accumulated wealth is more modest by comparison, and Toomes has his own winged flying suit, making him the Vulture (no one calls him that). Toomes even has his own evil Avengers: a group of criminals like the Shocker (Bokeem Woodbine), the Tinkerer (Michael Chernus), and the Scorpion (Michael Mando), updating Spidey's rogue's gallery we haven't seen yet in the movies from the original comics. Unlike Stark, Toomes is a family man, which, in the third act, suddenly makes the Vulture's issues with Spider-Man a lot more personal.

Peter's explanations for his disappearances and unexplained absences is his "Stark Internship," a sly shorthand for "Peter is doing a lot of stuff Iron Man does." As a 15 year old Millennial (or whatever Peter's generation, born after 9/11, is called) Peter is comfortable with and dazzled by tech. With StarkTech, he has the best of the best: his new Spider-Man suit comes with flying drones, Iron Man-like Heads Up Display, and its own A.I. (voiced by Jennifer Connelly, a brilliant casting choice as she's the wife of Paul Bettany, who once voiced Iron Man's A.I. Jarvis and graduated to becoming the Avenger called the Vision). "Suit Lady," or Karen as Peter eventually names her, talks him though his latest exploits and bungles. Peter is never brought so low as when, after disabling the tracker in the suit, his inexperience causes the Staten Island Ferry to be ripped in two, and Iron Man has to save him and scold him. Iron Man saves him twice, actually, and later takes his suit away. Unlike Tony Stark, Peter doesn't need StarkTech to be Spider-Man, and while that's ultimately the point of the movie - Spider-Man learns he isn't Iron Man, doesn't need to be, and his dream of being an Avenger can wait another, oh, 10 months or so according to Marvel's move release schedule - it takes the entire length of Homecoming to reach that conclusion. 

Meanwhile, as Spider-Man tries to ground the Vulture, Iron Man: Homecoming was happening all around him: the Avengers are somehow back in business after Civil War (Spider-Man was to be the newest recruit unveiled to the adoring public) even though the fugitive Captain America (Chris Evans) is "a war criminal," and even Gwyneth Paltrow walks back on as Pepper Potts, her broken relationship with Tony Stark healed magically off screen. As Tony Stark, the recognized kingpin of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Robert Downey, Jr. lords over all his scenes with or without Tom Holland. There are plenty of times, such as when Spider-Man, clad in his original homemade suit, clings to a Stark Jet thousands of feet in the air, and battles for his life against the Vulture, that we end up wondering if Iron Man will come and save him yet again. If Marvel wants to make Iron Man 4, they should just make Iron Man 4. It seems like blasphemy to suggest, but less Tony Stark is more Tony Stark in a Spider-Man movie.

Still, what Spider-Man: Homecoming delivers for most of its running time is the sheer giddy joy of seeing Spider-Man back in action, this time in the Marvel Universe. Peter's high school life and his classic cast of characters from the Lee/Ditko comics are updated into a multiracial gaggle of teens reflective of what a high school in Queens would look like in 2017. There are numerous jokes that land with aplomb, including a callback to the famous kiss in the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man that tears the house down. If only Peter took more time to enjoy his school chums like Liz (Laura Harrier), Michelle (Zendaya, criminally underused with a reveal that lands with a "huh?"), and even Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) more. Peter does spend quite a bit of time with his first ever annoying endearing no, annoying sidekick, Ned (Jacob Batalon) - too much time, really. Ned wants to be Peter's "man in the chair" superhero support and Peter doesn't have the heart to tell him his suit already comes with an omniscient A.I. "Suit Lady."

There is pleasingly a Homecoming Dance in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but Peter spends nary a moment at the dance with Liz, the most beautiful girl in school. Despite his schoolboy crush on Liz, this young Peter isn't the romantic Spidey his two predecessors were, and it is nice to see a Spider-Man not pining for Kirsten Dunst or Emma Stone ad nauseam. Besides, there's no time for love, Mr. Stark (though Mr. Stark would very much disagree). There's a lot of laughter, fun and heroics to be had in Spider-Man: Homecoming, a Marvel movie dedicated to showing us a Spider-Man doing things we've never seen Spider-Man do in a movie before, but the main lesson we and Peter take away is that this is Iron Man's world and Spider-Man is living in it.

(Also, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) finds out Peter is Spider-Man at the very end just like how Tony Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man to the world and okay I'm done now see you at Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War. Bye.)

Baby Driver

BABY DRIVER

** SPOILERS **

"How great would it be if your driving brought joy to people's lives?" signs Baby's adoptive father before Baby complies with his wishes and gets a job delivering pizzas. Writer-director Edgar Wright accepts his own challenge with Baby Driver, a breakneck, blisteringly inventive joyride where Wright heists the car heist movie genre and makes it his own. In Baby Driver, Ansel Elgort stars as the titular character, a young wunderkind wheelman for mastermind Kevin Spacey. A car accident that ophaned young Elgort left him with tinnitus; a permanent ringing in his ears, which he subsumes with music from a fleet of iPods in his collection. (Baby Driver is, like James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, fueled to its benefit by the director's personal music collection.) Behind the wheel, Baby is good enough to join Vin Diesel's Fast and the Furious family, and he just might if the Fast Fam ever pulled a heist in Atlanta.

Baby is a curious creature who provokes repeated explanation for the bank robbers he carts around, including Jon Bernthal, Flea, Eiza Gonzalez, and Jon Hamm. Wright nigh-overdoses on style early on, with a frankly unbelievable opening car chase followed by a triumphant Elgort dancing around the city streets, as if performing in a personal musical. Thankfully, necessary gravitas is provided by Jamie Foxx, a steely powder keg of violence who doesn't like or trust Elgort. He doesn't like or trust anyone, actually, but Elgort especially rankles him, no matter how much anyone vouches for him. Elgort himself is in Spacey's thrall and working off a debt; one last job doesn't ever mean one last job in the world of crime, which Elgort learns to his chagrin.

It turns out Elgort has a lot to protect, and not just his secret hobby of recording everyone he meets and remixing their voices. He has an aforementioned deaf elderly foster father, and he has a girl he loves, Lily James, the lovely waitress at his favorite diner, though this is a curiously chaste love affair; not quite the sexually charged relationship Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette had in True Romance. James is a conveniently free spirit; she's unattached and dreams of a future that's an endless road trip of adventure. It's a happy coincidence she meets just the right Baby Driver, but also unfortunate that despite his best efforts to shield her from the nature of his work ("You chauffeur important people?"), especially when Foxx suspects just why Elgort is so resistant to pull over at that particular diner, the bad people in Baby's lives come right to her table and order four Cokes.

Wright pulls off a neat trick of creating sympathy for a lead who's monosyllabic and seemingly impenetrable. Baby might be a gifted getaway driver ensconced in a life of crime, but he's got a streak of compassion running through him. Foxx and Hamm (each with a surname containing an extra consonant) take bravura turns as the heavy of the piece, each having a serious bone to pick with Baby, but the kid is good and ends up being too good for them. There's a moment, during a deadly car chase and shoot out with Hamm in a parking garage, where Baby pulls the lever on James' seat, putting it all the way to recline so that Hamm's bullets miss her. With that one heroic move, any lingering doubt as to the quality of Baby's character dissipates. This kid has style - beyond how his black and white jacket is an obvious ode to Han Solo - and he's worth rooting for. That goes double for Wright, who, after cult sensations Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, finally has a breakthrough film that should propel his long-admired talent to the Hollywood big leagues. Wright should gun the engine and never look back.

The Beguiled

THE BEGUILED

** SPOILERS **

In Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled, Colin Farrell plays a lobster a rooster in a henhouse. It's 1864, four years into the Civil War, and in battle-torn Virginia, young Oona Lawrence finds Farrell injured in the woods. He's a Union soldier - an enemy combatant - but his leg is badly wounded and he's desperate. Christian charity demands Farrell be rescued; he becomes the unwilling house guest of Nicole Kidman, who runs a school for girls. The presence of Farrell, who quickly recovers and finds ways to make himself useful so he can be invited to stay, upends the careful but combustible order of this house of young women of immaculate repute. There is an electric spark of forbidden sex in the air with this randy soldier recuperating in the music room.

As Kidman, an eternally forlorn Kirsten Dunst, who is the second oldest woman at the school, and their five young charges, including Elle Fanning, fret and debate about their house guest, we wonder what Farrell's true intentions are. No doubt, he has no intention of returning to the war. He's brazen in his attempts to wile Kidman and especially Dunst, whom he seems to take the biggest shine to - and who hesitantly reciprocates the attraction. Meanwhile, Fanning proves herself as brazen as Farrell; she sneaks kisses with Farrell and secretly invites him into her room. When Dunst catches them, her reaction is devastating. She pushes Farrell down the stairs, breaking his injured leg beyond repair. Kidman utters the most ghastly line and provokes the biggest laugh in the movie: "Get me the hacksaw and the anatomy book!"

The Beguiled is shot with a painterly beautiful style and is directed with precision and restraint by Coppola. The performances are equally precise and restrained and justly so: we sense the undercurrent of farce in this parlor drama. The actors seem just a careful held breath away from exploding in giggles and hysterics at moments like Farrell hobbling around on crutches, holding all the women hostage at gunpoint. It doesn't occur to the women that they could easily overpower Farrell, especially in his diminished state, no matter how crazy he acts. Farrell on crutches suddenly develops B-movie killer abililies; he can suddenly appear from out of frame, and he can keep pace with and catch Lawrence, who can run like a sprite. It's ultimately no surprise that the women of The Beguiled come to the decision that they have to get rid of this guy. Almost missing from the final shot is a fade to an iris with the Looney Tunes theme playing -- "That's all, folks!"

The Mummy

THE MUMMY

** SPOILERS **

There's a lot going on in director Alex Kurtzman's reboot of The Mummy, but also not a lot going on. It's weird. Here we have a movie hoping to launch an entire shared universe that tries to be so many things and falls short of everything it could be. Sofia Boutella, the scene stealer from Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond, is the new Mummy, an ancient Egyptian princess named Ahmanet. She was supposed to be Queen of Egypt, until her father the Pharaoh went and had a first-born son, putting the kibosh on her ascension. Ahmanet's response was to make a deal with Set, the Egyptian God of Death. Set turned her into a mummy a demon who murdered the Pharaoh and the rest of her family, but she was caught and mummified alive. That's how a princess who became a demon became The Mummy. 

Ahmanet was imprisoned far from Egypt, in a tomb deep beneath modern day Iraq. There she's inadvertently found by Tom Cruise, who plays a soldier of fortune named Nick Morton. However, this isn't the usual invincible Tom Cruise we normally see in Mission: Impossible films; this is more like the Tom Cruise from Edge of Tomorrow - an amoral jerk who gets his ass kicked a lot. I mean, a lot. Tom gets his ass handed to him by the Mummy and all her undead underlings throughout the movie. Cruise and a fetching archaeologist played by Annabelle Wallis survive a plane crash when they try to transport Ahmanet's unearthed sarcophagus, unwittingly unleashing the Mummy upon jolly old England. There's also the matter of the Mummy fixating on Cruise; she decided he's her chosen one whose mortal form will be inhabited by Set - all she needs is a dagger with a special ruby buried with a 12th century Crusader knight found in the bowels of London.

Doing his damnedest to make sense of all of this is Russell Crowe, who breathlessly narrates most of the movie's plot points and backstory. Crowe is the Head Explainer of a shadowy organization called Prodigium, which is headquartered beneath the British Museum of Natural History and tasks itself with "recognizing, examining, containing and destroying evil." Specifically evil in the form of gods and monsters, the more ancient the worse better. Crowe himself is one of those very monsters, as he portrays Dr. Henry Jekyll and his sadistic and cockney alter ego Mr. Edward Hyde. As the leader of Prodigium, Crowe's other duty is to set up the future of what's now branded as Dark Universe - Universal Pictures' shared universe of movie monsters. Prodigium's trophies include easter eggs of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a vampire skull, and probably the Invisible Man (we don't see him in Prodigium, but isn't that the point?).

The Mummy is pure B-movie schlock. Like a real mummy, it's missing some blood and guts, and at 107 minutes, it zips along like it's got somewhere else to be. Ahmanet, emaciated after 5,000 years of mummification, spends much of the movie trying to get her hotness back (#MAHA - Make Ahmanet Hot Again) and become the queen she was supposed to be (#MAGA - Make Ahmanet Great Again.) Despite this, and a couple of perfunctory but neat looking moments like unleashing a patented Mummy sandstorm with a Mummy face right in the heart of London, Boutella's talents are oddly underutilized as The Mummy. Cruise and Wallis have some fun on the run throughout the movie, and Cruise amusingly gets tossed around by Ahmanet in every fight, until he decides to give in to his destiny and become a monster to save Wallis' life. Thus, Tom Cruise becomes not just a monster but, by virtue of becoming the host of Set, Tom Cruise becomes a god. One cool thing about being The Mummy and Set is that when their evil magic kicks in, Cruise and Boutella each have four eyeballs. Makes rolling their eyes at the silliness of The Mummy doubly effective.

Wonder Woman

WONDER WOMAN

** SPOILERS **

In Wonder Woman, director Patty Jenkins places a perfect human being right in the middle of the starkest of horrors humanity is capable of and asks us to consider her, as she in turn considers us. Not that Princess Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot) is a human being. She is an Amazon, one of an ancient race of female warriors created by Zeus himself to defend humanity. The daughter of Zeus and of Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), Diana is much more than a mere Amazon. Goddess is a more apt description, and not just to be complimentary. With her bulletproof gauntlets, glowing golden Lasso of Truth, and her unshakable belief in herself and in the best of humanity, Wonder Woman is who all the world has been waiting for. As Hippolyta says, the world doesn't deserve her. To which, Diana learns, sometimes it isn't about what you deserve. Thank gods.

It's 1918, the First World War - the War to End All Wars - has raged for almost a half decade, and the war comes right to the shores of the Amazons' Paradise Island. When an American pilot spying for the British named Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes near the magically camouflaged island of Themyscira, with German boats in hot pursuit, the Amazons face the male half of the human race for the first time in millennia. Man now has more deadly weapons: guns, bombs, and for the first time, mustard gas, which doesn't discriminate who it gruesomely murders. Faced with this reality, Diana, trained from youth to be the greatest of the Amazon warriors, decides she must go and fight to save the world. Diana and Trevor escape the island, and the roles are reversed: Diana is now delightfully a fish out of water in a world she hardly understands. The deeply ingrained patriarchy of Georgian society certainly doesn't understand this beautiful, headstrong, sword wielding woman who can't possibly be Steve Trevor's 'secretary.'

As confused and occasionally repulsed as Diana is by the world she finds beyond her island paradise, she believes mankind is simply being coerced by Ares, the Greek god of war, who is the last survivor of the Greek pantheon after murdering all of his siblings, including Zeus. Diana believes wholeheartedly that she must simply kill Ares and it will end not just this war, but all wars, forever. As cultured and learned as Diana is in many other respects, her naivete in this matter is downright charming. Who Ares is and where he's hiding is a mystery, though all signs point to General Ludendorff (Danny Huston), the German leader who wants nothing to do with signing an armistice that signals Germany's surrender, preferring to gas everyone he can thanks to his pet chemist Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya). Finding out that human beings aren't completely under the thrall of an evil god - that people, including Steve Trevor - are messy, complicated, and prone to having all kinds of petty failings, is a crisis of conscience for Diana. In the end, what makes Diana a superhero - what makes her Wonder Woman - isn't her incredible power or prowess in battle, it's her ability to find empathy for people, even those who don't deserve it.

"I wish we had more time," Steve says to Diana, and we agree. At times, Wonder Woman feels a bit slight with its superhero origin story meshed with a gruesome war movie - though there are lots of familiar odes to Justice League director Zack Snyder's 300 as well as echoes of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy and Captain America: The First Avenger - right down to a blond soldier named Steve concluding the movie by hopping in an airplane and flying off to his doom. (Not to mention Wonder Woman's spiritual predecessor, Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie.) This is a film that could actually have been even longer, with more connective tissue to add more robustness, especially to the villains and all the characters who aren't Diana and Steve. Yet there are moments in Wonder Woman that truly sparkle, like Diana and Trevor's conversation and first night "sleeping together" on a boat, Diana's interactions with Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) in London, and a magical night in a tiny town in Belgium after Wonder Woman spectacularly liberated it from the German army. Even more moments like these would have been wonderful.

What makes Wonder Woman work - and why it rises high above its brethren in this current era of DC Comics superhero movies - is Patty Jenkins, who completely understands the power, grace, majesty, and boundless capacity for empathy that makes Wonder Woman special, and Gal Gadot, a magnetic, endearing screen presence who ranks with Christopher Reeve's Superman and Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man as a most perfectly cast actor to play her chosen superhero icon. Jenkins proves time and again, both in quieter character moments between Diana and Trevor and in a handful of truly awesome action set pieces - the No Man's Land centerpiece battle is one of the all-time greatest superhero movie action sequences - that she knows exactly who Wonder Woman is and what we want to see her do. In Gadot, she has the greatest partner, a superstar born for this role you can't take your eyes off of, who delivers above and beyond, and makes you believe in Wonder Woman. Most importantly - because gods know we need it - Wonder Woman believes in love, and in us.

Baywatch

BAYWATCH

** SPOILERS **

Baywatch is like a fish pulled out of the water, flapping around hopelessly on a boat deck. Even the visuals miss the boat: If one thinks hard of the "classic" TV series and can see past the image of the buxom lifeguards in their high-cut red swimsuits, one recalls the bright blue skies and sun-kissed California beaches the show was set in. The Seth Gordon-directed feature film, set in "Emerald Bay," substitutes South Beach and Savannah, Georgia for Malibu, and the dreariness speaks for itself. Only a small percentage of the movie takes place in South Beach, or on the beach in general, and somehow they forgot to shoot scenes when the sun is out. Most of Baywatch takes place in Savannah and comes off more like the ill-fated spinoff Baywatch Nights, with the lifeguards performing a lot of nocturnal undercover detective work in a nonsensical plot the movie takes great pains to try to explain - as if anyone in the audience cares for even an instant.

In spite of its enduring 1990's camp value, the Baywatch television series was never technically a comedy. So I suppose it's fitting that Baywatch the movie isn't either, though it would be surprised to learn such. In Baywatch, Dwayne Johnson plays Mitch Buchanan, the hero of the beach. Johnson is in full-on Samoan Thor alpha male mode, which rankles new recruit Zac Efron, who plays former two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming Matt Brody. There are fleeting jokes surrounding Efron not being very bright but overall the main joke driven into the sand is Efron being utterly baffled that Johnson and his Baywatch brigade think being lifeguards requires them to perform routine crime-fighting duties best left to the police. If they'd kept the action confined to the sandy shores, Baywatch might have tread water safely. Instead, the plot plunges headlong into an endless and immensely boring investigation of Priyanka Chopra's nefarious activities. She's running some sort of drug smuggling deal concurrent with some kind of real estate swindle. It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't matter, but it's the most important thing to the Baywatch lifeguards to stop and it eats up most of the movie's 2 hour run time. (That's two episodes of the old TV show, of which most people could only endure watching a few minutes at a time. Guess which scenes. Meanwhile, Baywatch the movie is at pains to provide any of those scenes.)

As Johnson and Efron take turns dominating the screen, languishing off to the side being utterly under-utilized are the three female Baywatch babes: Kelly Rohrbach as CJ Parker, Alexandra Daddario as Summer Quinn, and Ilfenesh Hadera as Stephanie Holden. Combined, they have virtually nothing to do except stand around and give reaction shots as Johnson and Efron muscle each other across center stage. Daddario fares the best of the three, in that Gordon's camera realizes her expressive blue eyes give off the best reaction shots. Meanwhile, the comic relief Jon Bass heroically provides struggles mightily to register in a film that has zero understanding of comedic timing, how to stage suspenseful action sequences, or even competent editing. Dutiful walk-on cameos are provided to Baywatch's two greatest icons, David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, and even these make zero sense as The Hoff and Pam are also playing Mitch Buchanan and CJ Parker. Not that it matters to Baywatch, which manages to be both desperately unfunny and bewilderingly unsexy; an R rated slog that is under the mistaken impression anyone at all turned up to see Zac Efron diddling a bare penis in a morgue. Baywatch ends up being an utter waste of a valuable beach day