Critics Upset Because New ‘Baywatch’ Movie Has Too Many Beach Bodies

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By Jonathan McAloon | 5:38 am, December 13, 2016

Even David Hasselhoff, in his 2007 memoir Don’t Hassel the Hoff, called the original Baywatch sexist.

It’s no surprise that remaking the 90s series – no matter how ironic or cerebral the twist – was always going to cater to people’s leery instincts. And the perpetually offended of Twitter have – unsurprisingly – kicked off:

“I’m not sure how it was possible to produce a trailer for an “ironic” Baywatch movie that actually looks more sexist than the original show”, said one. Woah, steady on there…

The 2017 film, which will star Zac Efron and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as rival lifeguards who get drawn into uncovering a criminal plot, seems to have been restyled as a bozo buddy comedy, aware of its frivolity and Carry On-level titillation.

And with a new Game of Thrones season months away, Paramount has run an R-rated trailer to sweep up the millions of viewers in need of something full of casual (or at least partial) nudity that they can slyly watch while pretending to be interested in the story.

In the trailer, released last week, we see Kelly Rohrbach as Pamela Anderson’s character C.J. Parker and Johnson – People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2016 – who play’s Hasselhoff’s character running out of the sea in the traditional way.

Efron, who plays the oiled, “reckless” new kid on the block, is told off for looking at Alexandra Daddario’s boobs while talking to her.

It’s hard to imagine how anybody could have expected anything else.

Once a teen heartthrob, Efron moved into the sort of knowing bro comedies usually peopled by the likes of Jonah Hill, James Franco and Seth Rogen, such as This Is The End, The Interview and the Jump Street movies.

Baywatch looks set to be of a similar ilk. But social media might have been too busy ogling and tutting to be fooled.

The film seems to have been written and marketed to somewhat balance the ratio of male and female beach bodies.

There could be an argument to be made that lead roles for Efron and Johnson exclude women from the leading roles in a woman-heavy film – but no-one seems to have tried to make it.

Perhaps they are pacified, on some fronts, by the “equal opportunities objectification”, as one Twitter user put it.

And then, along with feminist tutting there has also been meninist tutting due to the film and its media coverage aiming to titillate women as well as men:

But because of the usual beautiful democracy of outrage Twitter espouses, you can also expect people to object that there isn’t enough nudity. Equal objectification opportunities for all!

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