Pirate Radio Review
In the mid-'60s, the BBC more or less refused to play rock & roll over the airwaves, and since they controlled all of British radio at the time, that meant the teenagers and hip adults couldn't hear tracks by such soon-to-be-legendary bands as the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks. In response, a number of enterprising businesspeople anchored boats just a few miles off the British coast, and broadcast the banned music 24 hours a day back to the mainland. These became known as "pirate radio" stations, and such a colorful piece of history would seem to provide a wealth of rich material for a British writer and director as talented as Richard_Curtis.
The movie opens with the recently expelled Carl (Tom_Sturridge) arriving at Radio Rock, one of the most popular pirate radio stations in all of London. Carl's godfather, Quentin (Bill_Nighy), who owns the boat and the station, gives the young man a job and shy Carl soon meets the outlandish DJs who make Radio Rock a must-listen for kids on shore. Among the motley crew members are "The Count" (Philip_Seymour_Hoffman), the lone American on the ship and a true believer in the power and glory of the music; the horny, chunky Dave (Nick_Frost); the quiet, impossibly handsome Mark (Tom_Wisdom); and the drugged-out proto-hippie Bob (Ralph_Brown). The group keeps things lively with lots of shenanigans, including the Count's efforts to say the F-word on the air, their intricate schemes to get Carl laid, and the creative ways in which the crew fights back against the sustained efforts of a repressed government bureaucrat (Kenneth_Branagh) to wipe out all the pirate stations.
In his previous films, Curtis has shown a masterful ability to juggle large ensembles. Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love_Actually burst with three-dimensional characters that have distinct arcs -- they grow and change no matter how little screen time they might get. And that's what's missing entirely from Pirate Radio. With the exception of Carl -- who, it turns out, got on the ship because he believes the father he never met works there -- everybody in the film is a personality rather than a person.
Of course, Curtis is too talented to not serve up some funny moments with each of them -- the remarkable stupidity of Carl's roommate is a first-rate recurring gag, as is the simmering feud between the Count and Gavin (Rhys_Ifans), a once-legendary DJ who makes an unexpected return to Radio Rock. Unfortunately, because these characters never become three-dimensional, the movie turns out to be a series of incidents rather than an actual story. To put it in rock terms, Pirate Radio is a collection of songs rather than a coherent album -- and while there are a couple of good tracks, the majority of them are unremarkable. Perry Seibert, Rovi
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