How Desi Critics Are Reacting to Priyanka Chopra’s Hollywood Debut

Check what critics have to say about Priyanka Chopra’s ‘Baywatch’.

Film: Baywatch
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Pamela Anderson, David Hasselhoff

Excerpts from the reviews of Baywatch:

The villain of the piece is Priyanka Chopra, vamping it up and having fun swearing like a sailor. Playing an attractive drug-dealer, she cannily uses this film to deliver a barely-disguised showreel to studios in need of a baddie. “I’m not a Bond villain,” she even says, perhaps prophetically, in as many words, “Yet.” Chopra doesn’t get to say her attitude-soaked “Easy, Britney” line - a quip I rather enjoyed in the trailer, aimed at a cross-dressing Efron - in our theatres. The scene, like many, has vanished. 

Raja Sen (NDTV)

Truth be told, Chopra probably gets the best deal amongst all the women in this movie. Her scenes, although cheesy and clichéd, are a great deal more dignified and she is objectified the least in a movie that treats even its heroic characters as pieces of meat. The fact that we, the Indian entertainment media, praised Chopra for bagging a role in this awful film, with sundry headlines that praised her for ‘slaying’ in her career, is indefensible. The only redemption for the fraternity now lies in burying this hideous attempt at a cash-grab for good and resolving to exercise more restraint the next time.

Suprateek Chatterjee (The Quint)

Priyanka Chopra looks perfectly at home in Seth Gordon’s Baywatch. She would, since the humour is straight out of the Golmaal films and the plotting is vintage Abbas-Mustan. What is the point of going all the way to Hollywood if you are going to appear in something out of bad Bollywood? Chopra does her own share of asset baring, but her Victoria, described as the “J Edgar Hoover” of the bay, is neither sexy nor sinister.

Nandini Ramnath (Scroll)

Ta ra ram pam pam. Apni Priyanka Chopra could have been as cool-as-cucumber salad vamp actually. Snag is that she can’t help looking feverish in the circumstances I guess. Named Victoria Leeds, she’s responsible for running a drugs-and-real estate racket on the Californian shores. And to be honest, this plot device, strictly bores. There’s precious little for Ms Chopra to do, and if global critics have chanted that she’s been ‘underused’, I’d beg to differ. Ms Chopra has been misused in a part which is more cartoonish than menacing. Which is much in the vein of Deepika Padukone hissing faux sexily, “I don’t believe in good guys” in xXx: Return of Xander Cage. Comparisons are odious and all that but what to do? The point I’m belabouring to make is that neither Ms Chopra nor Ms Padukone can consider their Hollywood feature film debuts as feathers in their designer caps.

Khalid Mohamed (SpotboyE)