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PIRATE RADIO Send This Review to a Friend
An amusing, offbeat film harks back to the 1960s popularity of rock and roll in Britain and the idiocy of the British government in trying to stop music broadcasts from pirate ships. Writer-director Richard Curtis, who penned screenplays for “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill,” has packed the film with oddball characters and a revolutionary spirit. The result makes for situations that are often very funny even though too much has been crammed into the zany tale.
During the height of the popularity of the Beatles and other stars, very few hours were devoted to broadcasting rock on regular stations. This left a big gap which was filled by rogue broadcasts on ships parked in international waters. They earned a huge following among adolescents who listened to broadcasts under their bedcovers instead of adhering to parental orders for lights out, and youths, male and female, who tuned into these broadcasts religiously. There were those in government who apparently considered the new music and the free-wheeling patter of DJs immoral. Those doing the broadcasting on the pirate ship at the center of “Pirate Radio” capture the enthusiasm, defiance and love of rock that motivated the upsurge.
Bill Nighy plays Quentin, the ship’s owner and captain, with haughty, laid back determination. Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays a wildly enthusiastic, liberated American dedicated to his DJ calling. Tom Sturridge is Quentin’s teenaged godson Carl, who comes aboard, where a big deal is made of the need for him to lose his virginity. Women fans are brought aboard to provide sex along with the music. Other characters in the motley mix include those played by Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Rhys Darby, Ralph Brown, Tom Brooke, Chris O’Dowd, Tom Wisdom, Ike Hamilton and the ship’s lesbian cook Felicity (Katherine Parkinson). Kenneth Branagh is the British bad guy, a government minister wickedly scheming to shut down Radio Rock. And Emma Thompson has a small but effective role as Carl’s mom with a reputation for sleeping around with abandon. Carl wants to know who his father is.
Without telling you much more, I do want to note that the final scenes of seagoing support by fans visually resemble somewhat loosely the rescue operation at Dunkirk in World War II, only with eager women supporters leading the charge and ready to throw themselves into the arms of their rock and roll heroes. There’s a lot of fun to be had watching this flick, even allowing for its plot excesses. A Focus Features release.
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