Reed Tucker at the New York Post said “it washes up on the beach like a dead whale.” Katie Walsh at the Tribune News Service accused it of being “directed incompetently” and our own Matt Donato labelled it “bloated to a point where no push-ups or dietary restrictions can help.” Currently sitting pretty at 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, it looks as though Seth Gordon’s Baywatch is a cinematic shit sandwich (though sadly, it’s likely to be an extremely profitable shit sandwich).
So, naturally, they’re already planning up a second helping for us. Variety reports that producer Beau Flynn is currently sizing up a sequel that would reunite the cast on more questionably funny beachside adventures.
“We have an amazing story already,” says Flynn. “We’re bringing back Shannon and Swift who wrote on the first one, and I know Dwayne would be in, I know Zac and all the girls would be. We just have this really cool idea to put them in this whole new world. We would take it overseas.”
And yes, I just let out an audible sigh too. I mean, you’ve really got to produce a proper stinker when not even the colossal charisma of Dwayne Johnson can save you. By the way, when Flynn dismissively brings up ‘the girls,’ he’s referring to Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera and Alexandra Daddario.
Our only hope to prevent Baywatch 2 happening is to make sure Dwayne Johnson follows through on his political ambitions and pits himself against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Elections. If the actor is tasked with wrestling the world into shape one problem at a time, at least he’s not making awful beachside comedies, right?
Baywatch is now playing in theatres everywhere.