Baywatch is a 2017 action comedy directed by Seth Gordon, written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, and produced in part by Ivan Reitman. It stars Dwayne Johnson as Mitch Buchannon, Zac Efron as Matt Brody, Priyanka Chopra as the villain Victoria Leeds, alongside Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera and Jon Bass. It holds an eighteen percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 194 reviews and a Metascore of thirty-seven, which places it firmly in the generally unfavourable category. I am giving it a seven out of ten, and I would like to make my case.

This is an incredibly fun bad movie, and I want to be completely clear that it is bad. It is genuinely, unambiguously a bad film. But it knows precisely what it is, and that is the entire trick. At no point does it pretend to be anything else. It arrives, acknowledges its own ridiculousness, and proceeds to be ridiculous with total commitment.

It also understood that it needed to do two things simultaneously: deliver fan service to people who loved the original, and be willing to take shots at its own cast. Which brings me to the single best element in it.

The Rock calling Zac Efron "High School Musical" is, I assumed, a one-off gag. It is not. It is a sustained running joke across the entire film, in which Mitch essentially refuses to use Brody's actual name at any point. Documented examples include High School Musical, New Kids on the Block, NSync, Jonas Brother, Hot Wheels, McDreamy and, memorably, Princess Beaver. One reviewer at the time noted that it builds towards a genuinely sweet payoff by the conclusion, which is more structural thought than this film gets credit for.

And my favourite piece of contemporary criticism relates directly to this. A reviewer complained that the best joke Dwayne Johnson is given in the entire film is calling Efron "High School Musical." They wrote that as a damning criticism of the screenplay. I am choosing to interpret it as independent confirmation that the joke is excellent.

Now, the thing I believe people consistently get wrong about this film. The original television series was not good. It was never good. It was over the top, deliriously insane television, and that is the entire reason anybody watched it for eleven years. So a film adaptation which is also not good, and which instead delivers over the top, deliriously insane action, has understood the brief completely. That is not a failure. That is the landing being stuck.

The cameos are where it leans furthest in. David Hasselhoff appears, and his character is credited simply as The Mentor. No name. That is the entire credit, and it is perfect.