>The new Baywatch movie, a reboot of the Nineties beach-set crime-and-melodrama TV series, continues Hollywood’s unoriginal marketing. It holds momentary interest for the way it adapts television culture (free, meaningless distraction) for a new era.
>On the big screen, Baywatch might seem a variation on its cathode-ray source simply because it stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Hollywood’s leading exponent of biracial diversity, and Zac Efron, Hollywood’s newest male pin-up. Respectively, they play lifeguards Mitch and Matt — not entirely interchangeable but alliterative nonentities who bring little distinction to the basic formula. The combination of over-the-top action-movie stunts and crass humor is shameless, both below-the-belt and beneath most folks’ IQs.
>Hollywood movies have become television at just the point when media shills are spreading the fake news that we’re experiencing a “new golden age” of TV. These shills don’t call it a “renaissance,” because that word might intimidate victims of our failed education system and even cynics realize that nothing gets reborn in Hollywood, that recycling is not the same as being given new life.
>On the big screen, Baywatch might seem a variation on its cathode-ray source simply because it stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Hollywood’s leading exponent of biracial diversity, and Zac Efron, Hollywood’s newest male pin-up.
Sounds contrarian enough to me.
Dominic Hall
the most dangerous
Dominic Ortiz
I believe he means that having a biracial actor is a departure from Baywatch the television show. Also, Zac Efron was either not alive or a child when the show first aired.
Tyler Richardson
My point is that he's critical of mainstream tendencies, which is the definition of being contrarian. The last sentence hammers that home as well.
Hudson Hernandez
he is saying that while the Baywatch movie might SEEM different than its source material on the surface due to different actors, its really just the same thing.
David Young
Does he talk about how Baywatch has changed in a post-9/11 post-Obama environment?
Brody Jones
I thought Baywatch was always idiotic escapism
The whole show was wrapped around watching Pamela Anderson job in slow motion for about 6 seasons
Jaxson James
>All-time GOAT film critic J. Hoberman destroys Almond Black
