This week’s new releases feature our heroes defending large bodies of water when they should be fighting off bad reviews.
1. Baywatch (Opened Thursday, Paramount, 3,647 Theaters, 116 Minutes, Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: 20% Fresh [92 Reviews]): For those of you who are too young to remember, Baywatch was a TV show put on the air for the sole purpose of showing buxom women, typically Playboy Playmates, running in slow motion. You might hear different from people associated with the show, but that’s pretty much what it was.
On paper, this might make it the perfect choice for the current cinematic trend of turning slightly campy TV shows of old into full blown comedies. But it isn’t. It is hard to parody something that is an inadvertent parody of itself.
The result? A film like this, which gets a 20% fresh rating.
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Disney, 4,276 Theaters, 129 Theaters, Rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence, and some suggestive content, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: 32% Fresh [117 Reviews]): I can’t say I’m a fan of these films. Obviously, I am in the minority–these films make so much money that a $230 million budget in the hands of new and relatively novice directors for this film doesn’t even make Disney blink, but I found them too long and needlessly convoluted.
It’s been six years since the last one, and it seems like Disney is trying to recapture the feel of the original trilogy. But this has quickly become a film where the story of what happened during the making of it might make a better movie then what they put on screen.
Conventional wisdom states that the lackluster reviews the film is receiving won’t stop it from being a big hit. I’m not that sure. But if you need another opinion, be sure to check out Rich Drees’ review of the film here.
