Baywatch Proves There's Nothing Wrong With A Little Skin, Sand And Surf

THE TRADITION OF OGLING BEAUTIful people on the beach goes much further back than that ’90s TV staple of jiggle-schlock, Baywatch.

- Stephanie Zacharek

In the mid-’60s, the young Sally Field made a charming, ridiculously peppy teen surf angel on ABC’s Gidget. At the movies in ’63, teen heartthrob Frankie Avalon and onetime Mouseketeer Annette Funicello began kicking up sand in Beach Party. Before that, Victorianera gents enjoyed postcards of bathing beauties in woolen swimsuits. Ancient Egyptians probably had their own version of shoreline eye candy.

Still, your friends may laugh if you express a desire to see Seth Gordon’s modernized Baywatch. Time to find new friends. This new Baywatch is lightweight, a tiny bit crude and a trillion grains of sand away from anything approaching realism. But it’s also a lot of fun. If you’re looking to lose yourself in a picture that won’t tax your cranium too much, you could do worse than to submit to this one’s frisky surf.