07.07.09 WASN’T THIS CALLED ‘SON OF THE BEACH’?

(Game: Count the actresses still working in this picture.)

So Paramount has plans to make a Baywatch movie, and they’re hoping to reimagine it as a comedy (even though it was kind of already a comedy). From Variety:

Hoping to add some giggle to the jiggle [you can't see me, but I'm slamming my head in my desk drawer right now -Ed.] Paramount Pictures has set Jeremy Garelick to rewrite and direct a bigscreen comedy based on the syndicated series. The film marks Garelick’s directing debut. The scribe, who most recently did an uncredited rewrite of “The Hangover” with Todd Phillips, has written “Murray at Large” for Phillips to produce and possibly direct at Warner Bros., and also scripted “The Insane Laws” at Columbia.

DreamWorks paid seven figures for remake rights in 2005 and got a script by Jay Scherick and David Ronn [credits: Norbit, The Zookeeper, National Security] that was heavy on action. Garelick was sent the script do a punch-up. Though he never saw the original TV show and its well-rounded cast [another subtle tit pun! you're on a roll, Variety writer guy!], he saw an opportunity to turn it into broad comedy.

“It felt like the template to do a movie that was similar to ‘Stripes’ and ‘Police Academy,’ the comedies I loved growing up,” [THIS SENTENCE HAS NO PREDICATE. GUH.] Garelick said. “Rather than trying to pitch the tone, I figured it would be easier to write the first act to convey who these characters were,” Garelick said.  Some 37 pages later, Garelick has landed the job. The script now focuses on two unlikely lifeguard candidates trying to catch on alongside the buff bodies that will be as abundant in the film as they were in the TV series.

I don’t even know where to start with this story.  First off, who hasn’t seen Baywatch? Secondly, they already made this, it was called Son of the Beach. Third, The Insane Laws? There’s no way a movie with that title is anything but a puke-filled afterbirth.  Finally, DreamWorks spent seven figures for the rights and then hired the guys from Norbit to write it?  That’s like buying a Gulfstream jet and handing the keys to your landscaper.  Every person in this story should be fired out of a cannon into a volcano.