You can’t Jump Street everything. Yes, I just used 21 Jump Street as a verb and so is Hollywood. While the proposed third film in Sony’s Jump Street series currently remains in limbo, that isn’t stopping studios from attempting to launch other brands in a similar comedic fashion. This year offers up two such candidates, in the form of Warner Bros.’ CHiPs and Paramount’s Baywatch. The former arrives in theaters this weekend. The latter will hit screens in May. Both have taken a comedic, if not downright satirical, approach to their TV-based source material. They’ve also done so to varying degrees of success, if the previews are anything to go by. Let’s take a look at the latest trailer for Baywatch, which dropped earlier today…
Mind you comedy is one of the most subjective genres there is, because like horror, it is primarily based on emotion. It’s goal is, above all other things, to make you laugh. For me, each new preview for Baywatch has gotten better, with this latest trailer eliciting quite a few chuckles. A lot of this has to do with the apparent chemistry between stars Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, both of whom appear to be having a ball.
On the flipside, absolutely none of the CHiPs trailers have done anything for me. If anything, each new offering of footage has continually pummeled my initial enthusiasm for it into oblivion. After all, despite some ugly racial commentary moments, I kind of enjoyed Dax Shepherd’s directorial debut Hit & Run. When he signed on to bring CHiPs to the big screen, I was cautiously optimistic. Ever since previews have been rolling out, however, I have begun to dread its existence. I’ll still be giving it a chance very soon, Marketing can often misrepresent the actual film. That said, to say that I’m less than enthusiastic to view the picture would be an understatement. Sorry Warner Bros., but cheap jokes and vulgarity will only get you so far with me.
This isn’t a matter of Jump Street duology directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller being the only people who have successfully brought a serious (or at least sincere) television series to the big screen in a comedic or satirical fashion. Such a statement would be blatantly false. After all, good-to-great films such as the first two Addams Family films, Josie and the Pussycats, Land of the Lost, Maverick, and Dragnet exist. Hell, even the first two Brady Bunch films, 1994’s The Flintstones, and the first two Scooby-Doo movies are pretty fun.
For every such offering, however, you have just as many duds. It’s not that hard to conjure their memory either, unless you’ve successfully avoided them or at least repressed your memories. The Avengers, Bewitched, Dark Shadows, Get Smart, I Spy, My Favorite Martian, and Starsky & Hutch immediately come to mind. They and many others have all had intentionally funny (or campy) adaptations hit theaters there were mediocre, if not outright terrible.
What makes the above-mentioned films that are good work is not the comedy, but the talent behind it. Barry Sonnenfeld and his team knew what they were doing when they brought The Addams Family to life. Same goes for Brad Silberling and his creative partners on Land of the Lost. The same also, naturally, applies to Phil Lord and Chris Miller on their endeavors. Now matter a film’s final box office tally, at the end of the day, talent floats and mediocrity tends to be lost to the ocean floor of time.
Does that mean that we will be saying the same thing about director Seth Gordon & Co. when Baywatch arrives this summer? Of course not, but based on what I’ve seen, there’s a good chance we might be. As for CHiPs? Well, I’ll find out for certain over the next week, but at this point I have my doubts.
CHiPs hits screens nationwide on March 24th, 2017.
Baywatch washes ashore into cinemas on May 26th, 2017.
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ADFan