★★½
(MA) 116 minutes

Winter is here in the southern hemisphere, which means the start of the summer blockbuster season in Hollywood – and they don't get any more summery than this action-comedy reboot of Baywatch, in its 1990s heyday one of the most popular TV shows in the world.

Even as a non-aficionado, I can confirm certain things have changed since the original show, best-known for its leering shots of Pamela Anderson as a bikini-clad lifeguard running in slow motion along a Los Angeles beach. While that image gets rehashed here, the setting has switched to Florida, and Anderson's character CJ, now played by Alexandra Daddario, has been pushed to the sidelines along with her fellow babes.

This time round, it's primarily the men who are asked to show off their bodies – specifically Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron who play, respectively, the fatherly head of the lifeguard team and the cocky newcomer. While both have proven their acting talent many times over, it's a fair bet that preparation for these roles involved more time spent in the gym than pondering the nuances of character.

The director Seth Gordon seems to be aiming for the audience that made a hit out of Steven Soderbergh's male stripping drama Magic Mike – and it's tempting to wonder what the project would have gained from the enigmatic professionalism of Soderbergh, perhaps the one director in Hollywood who could have made it an artistic success.

In his absence, the film shuttles between many approaches. The feeble plot about crooked developers is mocked in the manner of the 21 Jump Street films, with Efron's character pointing out the weirdness of a group of lifeguards taking it upon themselves to solve crimes.

There are echoes of the Fast and the Furious series in the depiction of the Baywatch gang as a surrogate family. There's also an element of gross-out comedy, notably in some gay-panic hijinks at a morgue: if the central duo have to get up close and personal with a corpse, they'd evidently prefer a female one.

From scene to scene, it's never quite clear whether this Baywatch is paying tribute to its model or sending it up. Even to pose the question may be giving the matter more thought than Gordon did. Still, in the right mood it's possible to enjoy the dawdling pace, the equal-opportunity voyeurism, even the frank stupidity – in more or less the spirit of a lazy day at the beach.