2017 - 0.2/5
Oh. My. God. My short review for this movie is that I'm not entirely sure how a movie that was made for 2017 was cheesier and MORE horrible than the TV show it was based on from 20 years ago. Having said that, I will proudly admit that I actually liked the show back in the day. For its time, it was a good show.
I know this movie wasn't meant to be a great movie. I know going into this movie that it would have its fair share of cheesiness, but my god! It jolted back and forth from "comedy" to "drama" and had more ups and downs than a girl on her period!!! And yes, I did use quotes, because this movie was neither a comedy nor drama!
One minute, Zac Efron's character is talking to the girl he likes and he can't help but look at her boobs and they have [an unnecessarily drawn out] banter between them, and literally the next scene, they're having a dramatic moment in which Efron's character is telling her his sad sop story and how he started swimming; and I shit you not, all it was, was the following: "I grew up in 3 foster homes. One had a pool, so that's how I started swimming". My note to the writers of this movie: wow, that was about as deep as the ocean that Efron's character got shoved into whilst in the cage - for those of you who haven't seen this movie, it was less than 20 metres. Besides, Efron and the chick had ZERO chemistry; and I am not just saying that because I am in love with the man. And for someone that has been a fan of Efron since his HSM days (no shame), this was his WORST acting ever! If he, for whatever reason thought that this would win anyone over, it will not happen. And some might say, "well, I'm only going to see this movie to stare at Efron for 2 hours"... even that seemed off. I'm not sure if his face just looked really weird with certain camera angles (he almost looked too pretty) or if it was super photo-shopped/edited, but even his body didn't seem right.
It seemed as if most of the "drama" came from Mitch (Dwayne Johnson), and the rest of the crap came from everyone else. It's as if Dwayne Johnson was the only person who thought this movie was supposed to be a drama, and everyone else was not just on a different page, they were in a different book, in a different library, in a different country, in a different language.
Random notes:
-Really?! Ronnie gets to be a lifeguard because he has heart? Um, no, if I'm drowning, I want someone that'll get to me in a timely manner and actually save my ass!
-the plot flip-flopped too much for its own good. It's as if the director had no idea where to go with scenes and just ended it abruptly and moved on.
Yes, this movie does poke fun at itself and what it was supposed to be, we've seen it done before, but this movie did not do it well. This movie was all kinds of levels of bad. Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Who watched this movie and said, "Yes, this will be the final cut that we release to the public!"? All I'm saying is that someone needs to get fired.
