Recently I have come under some fire on our message boards and in my email for being a little negative about films in development. I have been told that I am angry, or bitter, or perhaps just a pretentious prick.
While these are all good judgements of my character (please remember to include in future diatribes important aspect like how I am impotent, or perhaps how I live in my mother’s basement), they have no bearing on why my view on upcoming Hollywood films is often negative. It’s a three part thing:
1) I think sarcastic is funnier.
2) I have seen many Hollywood films and have come to a deep understanding of what a complete waste of time and money they are for every living being involved.
But most importantly:
3) There has been an announcement made of a Baywatch movie. Please, tell me how I am supposed to keep up even a facade of positivity when part of my day is spent cutting and pasting articles about an industry that does something like make a Baywatch movie?
DreamWorks is behind this, having optioned the rights to the show, which is a huge hit all across the world because scantily clad babes and hunks running in slo-mo crosses all boundaries of language, culture and taste. They’re rushing it to screens for 2006.
What’s the point of a Baywatch movie anyway? Now, Baywatch: Nights I could groove to, but the original series just seems to have nothing to expand to feature length. The show was never exactly all that serious, so a Starsky & Hutch style parody wouldn’t really work. And as far as I could tell unlike a show like Serenity, Baywatch had no long standing storylines that demand resolution in a big screen format.
The whole thing is just plain dumb, and sad, and really saps your belief in the good of humanity. Of course how awesome would it be if I ended up eating crow and this turned out to be the Return of the King of all beach movies? That happens in the same universe where Howard Dean is president, by the way.
Also, I tend to avoid reading anything from Mr. Beaks before I write a story or review, but he had a thing about this on his blog today and frankly he brings up a good point – with David Hasselhoff being King of All Cameos this year (I think he pops up in four or five films), the only way the Baywatch movie could compete would be to leave him out of it altogether.