Baywatch

Memorial Day is the official start of summer, but in Movieland, summer starts well before, in early May or even sooner. (I generally say there four season on the calendar but only two seasons for movies: Summer and Awards.) Still, Memorial Day is still supposed to be a big deal in movie theaters; kids have an extra day off from school and Hollywood delivers some of the season’s biggest offerings.

There was no jocularity on Baywatch when I was a child. These brave men and women in red bathing suits were doing very important things, like guarding lives, performing CPR, running in slow-motion, and occasionally starting totally random spinoff shows featuring sea monsters. The new Baywatch movie is a new breed of ‘watch. These guys do joke around, constantly. It’s Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron as mismatched partners on the lifeguard scene, joking about one another’s testicles, performing highly unprofessional autopsies, and even arguing over severed limbs. Seriously: Not your Hasselhoff’s Baywatch.

Baywatch doesn’t hit theaters until next summer, so it’s going to be quite a while before we see the first trailer or official photos. Thankfully, Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron are pretty fond of Instagram, and the pair have been sharing lots of images from the set, including our first looks at co-stars Kelly Rohrbach, Priyanka Chopra and Ilfenesh Hadera. If nothing else, the R-rated comedy has a diverse cast and they all look like they’re having a blast.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is not afraid to show off his glistening abs. If you have 'em, flaunt 'em, right? He did it a lot in the recent 'Hercules' movie and in Michael Bay's 'Pain & Gain,' and he's about to break out those puppies once again (and, probably, for a lot longer) in Paramount's upcoming 'Baywatch' movie.