Baywatch Movie Review – A Lifeguard Perspective
Hello, I am Wyatt Werneth, with Lifeguard TV®. I am a real lifeguard, and I want to talk to you about the movie, “Baywatch”. I had the opportunity to see it down at Miami South Beach, at the World Premiere. I got to speak with all the actors. The cast, as well as the writers, and the original creators of the TV show, which I grew up with. I thought that was fantastic!
First thing I want to talk about are the things that lifeguards are going to look at. And that is the accuracy of how they’re performing their skill set, if you will. And all the stuff that lifeguards do as far as training. One of the things I noticed right away, was no one had a whistle. Lifeguards use whistles. That is something that we use to control the crowds and get attention. Not one time did they use a whistle. I would have to say they were more reliant on their good looks and their beautiful bronzed bodies. Whistles are very important to lifeguards.
Another thing, in the opening scene, when Dwayne Johnson (Mitch Buchanan) notices a swimmer in distress; he jumps over the railing of the tower and runs out into the water and makes a magnificent dive off of the jetty. But he does not have fins. That is something that we will not go in the water without, is a flotation device, which he did have. But he did not have fins, and he did not blow a whistle and alert the surrounding lifeguards that were on duty that this was all going on.
Now one of the most exciting aspects of it is the graphics. When Mitch Buchanan comes out of the water, and he’s holding the survivor that he just went after, you have Baywatch blowing up in the background, you have dolphins doing tricks. And that’s really exciting. I wish that was how it was when we came out from an assist or a rescue. It’s nothing like that. So as lifeguards, we’re going to take a look at this movie in a way that nobody else has or will.
And you could imagine all the movies that have come before that. Like CHIPs had just come out. The cops are looking at that in a different light. Back in the day when Top Gun came out, all the people in the Navy and the pilots were looking at it. So lifeguards, we have an opportunity to really critique this movie.
I personally, I liked it, okay. I thought it was pretty neat. One of the interesting aspects of it was I got to meet the screenplay writers. They actually, I think captured some of the stuff that was kind of true to life. They had some parts in there about how lifeguards are perceived by the police department and city officials as just people out on the beach having a good time and getting a tan. That’s very real.
We also had some parts in there where we had some, some conflict among the people who were competing or trying out to be lifeguards. And we also had some stuff where the administration was replacing people who had been there longer, and deserved the position. A lot of the stuff, I thought was brilliant. I mean, I thought the way that they wrote this in, and the characters that they identified – and having different specifics, were a lot like some of the people that we deal with in a lifeguard environment. So A+ for that, guys! The writers, screenwriters, I think they did an awesome job with that.
Now for the drama side, the stuff that we go to movies for. There were a lot of explosions and a lot of beautiful people. That’s why we go to the movies, I guess, right? There was a lot of that. Now the characters in relation to the TV show were, I think way on the other side of the page. Imagine David Hasselhoff as Mitch Buchanan. That is a totally different dynamic there.
To say which one do you like the best? I’d leave that up to you guys. Me personally, I like David Hasselhoff. I kind of grew up with that. Mitch Buchanan, his 2.0 version with Dwayne Johnson taking over. I liked a lot of the more seriousness and the professionalism, if you will, that David Hasselhoff had.
The views expressed in this review are not necessarily that of Lifeguard TV®.
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