Pirate Radio

Pirate Radio (aka The Boat that Rocked) hoists itself onto the currents of a fun two-hour music video about ‘60s British rock ‘n’ roll radio but can’t seem to find a signal of the real story arc.

The outline of the movie is about a guerrilla radio station called Radio Rock that broadcasts across the North Sea of Britain during the mid-‘60s. The DJs that inhabit the boat are a crew of men and one women, who start playing rock ‘n’ roll music around the clock, which catches quick popularity with the public but the staff become enemies of the state with the conservative government. As the government tries to stop their music rebellion, Radio Rock becomes wilder and more popular than ever.

The movie has a tidal wave of character actors from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost, Rhys Ifans and Bill Nighy to help tell the history of these DJs and how they became the voice of the people on the cusp of a cultural revolution.

The odd thing about this cast of characters is that they seem transplanted from their better movies with Hoffman playing a Lester Bangs-like American DJ named The Count, Frost playing the cuddly best bud Doctor Dave, Ifans playing the flamboyant celebrity DJ Gavin, and Nighy the cheeky captain of the ship Quentin, the kindred  soul to his rock ‘n’ roll star counterpart  in Love Actually.

The biggest surprise  character is Kenneth Branagh, the esteemed Laurence Oliver of our times, who gives a scene-chewing performance as Sir Alistair Dormany; the minister of government media. As the sniveling villain of the movie, Brana gives Dormany such a humorless Grinch-like quality that you can’t help but laugh out loud every time he utters a line.

The movie’s writer and director Richard Curtis of Notting Hill and Love Actually fame, tries to structure the movie like a Robert Altman picture, brining in a multi-fascinated characters with a mix of comedy and drama. The problem with Pirate Radio is that it capsizes itself with too many characters on the tiny boat. We get to see only glimpses of them in action and not a fully connecting story about them.

A problem might be that the movie was given last-minute edits for U.S. audiences since the UK version, titled The Boat that Rocked, was repacked after being a minor flop within the UK. A sign of this is the constant repeat of montages that the story seems to rely on. This gives the movie a fun music video quality but nothing underneath its exterior.

The large upside to the whole film is the music. We are treated to a full two hours of  great ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll songs by The Who, The Crazy World of  Arthur Brown, The Kinks, the Jimmy Hendrix experience, The Hollies, Martha and The Vandellas  and a dozen others. The wall-to-wall music will put a beat in your heart but not much in your brain. But then that might be where Pirate Radio, lies, in the heart rather than in the head.