Sunday, November 15, 2009
A+E, Movies, Reviews

‘Pirate Radio’ Deserves to Walk the Plank

 

In the mid-’60s, pirate radio stations brought rock and roll to the British masses from boats anchored offshore, stealing half the listeners from the conservative government stations.

In “Pirate Radio,” that’s only the background—potentially a very interesting one—for the somewhat typical coming-of-age story of young Carl (Tom Sturridge), whose mother (Emma Thompson, uncredited) banishes him to the Radio Rock boat in 1966 after he’s expelled from school.

The Radio Rock staff is introduced too quickly to give us a handle on them. Quentin (Bill Nighy), Carl’s godfather, is apparently the station manager. The only DJs with defined shifts are “Midnight Mark” (Tom Wisdom), “the sexiest man on the planet,” and Bob Silver (Ralph Brown), who’s on from 3 to 6 a.m. The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the superstar DJ until the man he replaced, Gavin Cavanagh (Rhys Ifans), returns and a rivalry breaks out.

Writer-director Richard Curtis juggled multiple story lines far better in “Love Actually.” Here they include the government’s attempts, led by Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), to sink the pirate stations. But for more than half the movie, all that really matters is Carl losing his virginity. It’s a waste of a great story that’s rarely, if ever, been told on screen.

The “Titanic” climax goes for laughs and suspense without generating much of either. The soundtrack features dozens of great oldies, not all from the correct period. Some dialogue is even more anachronistic (“think outside the box,” “smoking gun,” “the F-word”).

“Taking Woodstock” showed how to capture the spirit of the ’60s in a personal story set against a momentous event. “Pirate Radio” tries to do the same thing, but its formulas and clichés only trivialize the rockin’ rebels. 2 STARS—Steve Warren