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Visual:		6.0
Audio:		8.0
Acting:		6.0
Writing:		4.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Richard Curtis
Writer(s):	Richard Curtis
Starring:	Bill Nighy • January Jones • Kenneth Branagh • Nick Frost • Philip Seymour Hoffman • Rhys Darby • Rhys Ifans • Tom Sturridge • Talulah Riley
Genre:	Comedy
Website:	http://www.pirateradiomovie.com/
Release Date:	November 13, 2009
Rated:

The end credits for Pirate Radio is a collage of all the rock albums released between the time period the movie takes place in (1966) and present day. It starts off well, with the likes of Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, then comes the headscratchers like Eminem and Kylie Minogue. What bothered me about it is not the incorrect genre identification, but the not-so-subtle implication that they all belong in the same category, and that is a new generation of music that supplants the old dogs establishment of classical music.

This is no more evident than in the film’s villain, a checklist caricature of a bureaucrat played by Kenneth Branagh, who’s so unbelievably square that he keeps his Christmas dinner a silent affair, doesn’t understand how jokes work, and says desperately uncool things like, “That’s the point of being the government. If you don’t like something, you simply make up a new law that makes it illegal.” 1960’s British government apparently accepted applications from the Gestapo. I say villain lightly, because he's more like a recurring subplot that never once poses any serious threat. It’s like if Wile E. Coyote barely even shows up for the cartoon and then quickly fails miserably every time, while for the most part we keep following the Road Runner to see how fast he can run. Road Runner’s cool and all, and maybe you won’t get tired of hearing him beep over and over, but you can see where the cartoon falls apart.

Meanwhile, the drug-bingeing, responsibility-dodging and sexual frenzy that are the DJs aboard the boat/station Radio Rock embody rock star role models possessing enough good-humored charm and loyal camaraderie to coax the audience into letting them get away with pretty much anything—even a particularly nasty-spirited gag about secretly screwing a groupie in pitch black so she won’t know who it is, which is treated as a throwaway laugh. For this purpose, director Richard Curtis assembled very funny and very likable people like Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Rhys Darby; led by the renegade of all renegades, the only American on the boat so naturally the most rocking, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

At one point, when facing the possibility of shutting down the operation, Hoffman asserts sadly, “These are the best days of our lives.” I got the feeling that this character wrote the screenplay, with great embellishment. How else would it be so flatly one-sided and indulgent, spending most of its time showing what great lives and sweeping influence pirate DJs had? Which is nonsense, anyway. That “inspired by a true story” tag? Take it with a grain of salt, as usual. The British government never banned rock n’ roll on the airwaves and pirate radio was not started because of it.

If the movie feels jumpy, stuck at cute mode and mostly pointless, that’s because Pirate Radio is a heavily trimmed version. Curtis’ original cut of the film is 3 hours long, which was then edited down for the UK release earlier this year under the name The Boat That Rocked. It bombed critically and commercially, so Curtis went back to the editing room to take out 20 more minutes and make it more palatable for the American market.

He turned in a safe, lighthearted, crowd-pleasing, unchallenging version that feels like the complete antithesis of rock n' roll. This makes more sense when you realize that when Pirate Radio talks about rock music, what it really means is pop music. It strangely insists upon the audience that its protagonists are a bunch of crazy rebels of rock lore, yet the movie itself doesn’t support that rep. It instead portrays them as mainstream celebs all of England adore—save for those square curmudgeon dudes in the government. Taking that as the attitude of the film, it’s not so much about being revolutionary as it is about being wanted.

So the story’s a mess and the characters are bland and you’ll probably forget this movie exists in a matter of weeks, but for all its fabricated nostalgia and clueless attempt to be cool, it’s a mostly painless comedy that at least has some wit to spare and a cast willing to make them work.

Even if it does look like they had more fun shooting the film than we’ll ever have watching it.