Movies

‘Baywatch’ reboot is good for celeb-ogling, but not much else

On the bright side, it’ll probably do killer business in Germany.

“Baywatch” is the latest in a burgeoning Hollywood genre — the meta sendup of a TV series — setting out to reboot the cheesy ’90s TV show, which starred David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson and that inexplicably became an overseas syndication phenomenon.

But “Baywatch” is not nearly as good as this genre’s best entries, like 2012’s “21 Jump Street.” It washes up on the beach like a dead whale.

Dwayne Johnson steps in for Hasselhoff, as Mitch Buchannon, the leader of a team of lifeguards who do more than work on their tans. He’s joined by new recruit Matt Brody (Zac Efron) to take down a ruthless drug dealer (Priyanka Chopra).

“Baywatch” takes a few amusing stabs at satire — Efron declares that the group’s adventures sound like “a really entertaining but farfetched TV show” — but, in the end, director Seth Gordon and a cargo ship full of writers use the beachy setup as little more than a vehicle for generic hard-R and gross-out gags.

Perhaps in a karmic attempt to make up for the original series’ reliance on bouncing slo-mo boobs, the movie leans heavily on penis jokes. A nerdy lifeguard (Jon Bass) gets his bait and tackle wedged between chair slats. Efron is forced to examine a dead man’s undercarriage.

At least the cast looks good.

It all feels woefully juvenile, and many of the jokes strain harder than Hasselhoff sucking in his gut back in Season 9. “Who taught you to drive? Stevie F - - king Wonder?” one character cracks.

The comedy mostly belly flops, but the movie does deliver on the international language of T&A&A — the third A is for abs. Efron’s obligatory shirt stripping at this point has to feel as soul-crushing as the Rolling Stones playing “Satisfaction.”

The script spends much of its time developing the banter-driven relationship between the male leads, leaving the unfortunate female members of Team Baywatch little to differentiate themselves from one another beyond their cup size and hair color.

There’s the brunette (Alexandra Daddario) who looks good in a swimsuit, the blonde (Kelly Rohrbach) who looks good in a swimsuit and the other brunette (Ilfenesh Hadera) who looks good in a swimsuit.

Even the action scenes need CPR, often undermined by effects so chintzy, you wonder if the money intended for them was instead eaten up by the production’s seven-figure waxing budget.

It’s a shame. The cast is capable, and a meta-examination of “Baywatch” should have produced something sharper.

A post-credits outtake/blooper reel mentions a sequel, but expect those plans to get quickly tossed overboard.