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2.5 stars
Famed British romantic comedy writer/director Richard Curtis purposely went out of his element, both in subject matter and style, for his rocking labor of love, Pirate Radio. Although this sort of career change is commendable, the film is not, despite all of its individually winning or witty little moments. Pirate Radio is a crowd-pleasing, inoffensive and mostly incoherent attempt by Curtis to fit everything in at once. It’s a group-centered buddy comedy, an ode to pop music, a love story, a coming-of-age story, a missing dad story and a sticking-it-to-the-Man story. However, what is primarily lost is just that: the Man. These lost trains of thought might have actually made it to the station if Curtis had simply realized that the most interesting material in his ’60s cotton-candy fantasy is the conflict between counterculture and society, not the sexed-up buddy dynamics that make this film seem at its worst like a frat comedy in paisley and sideburns.
The setting is England in 1966, a time when severe radio restrictions forced the British public to turn to off-shore radio stations to experience their most popular export, rock and roll. This is a fascinating chapter in music history that is little known in the U.S., but don’t look to this movie for any insight. Pirate Radio focuses on the comedic exploits of Radio Rock, eight crazy DJs who man the semi-illegal radio station in a boat anchored in the English Channel. The massive ensemble cast is headed by an underused Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman’s character The Count is just one of the flamboyant, megalomaniacal, rock-obsessed personalities that fill this crowded ship, but as might be expected, most performances tend to get their five minutes and then fade out. Hoffman, for all his heavy-duty acting chops, only gets about 15.
The film has its moments, but they come in snippets. Thankfully there are great comedic talents that attempt to fill in the blank spaces, such as Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost and the weasely Rhys Darby, also known as Murray from Flight of the Conchords. But for all the talent involved, there’s simply too much rollicking camaraderie, sex jokes and aimless hints of tension. Curtis hangs too much of his film on these comedic dynamics, though they are occasionally entertaining or individually enjoyable. For instance, Mad Men’s January Jones makes a hilarious cameo and breathes some life into the mess mid-film, but if you edit her scenes out you wouldn’t know 20 minutes were missing. Knowing that M*A*S*H and Animal House were the two main influences of this film is informative (see page 17), but doesn’t seem to justify the distracted structure.
Like Animal House, there’s the villainous square, the disapproving dean, here played by Kenneth Branagh as Sir Alistair Dormandy, the minister who wants pirate radio shut down at all costs. It would be nice to get into the reasons behind this or to see some conflict between the government and the heroic DJs at Radio Rock, but instead we get brief and wooden on-shore interludes of Branagh helplessly shaking his fist. Other instances of supposed drama, such as the plotline involving the young Radio Rock protégé Carl (Tom Sturridge) also fall flat, despite the cast’s best efforts. Carl’s search for his absent father appears to be the dramatic backbone of the film, and his quest to lose his virginity the comedic one. Both are too flimsy to hold and the audience is left wondering why a film that could have taught much about British rock at its apex instead serves up a few coming-of-age platitudes set to groovy but generally predicable ’60s sound cues.
Part of the problem was that Curtis shot a five-hour film and then tried to edit it down to a typical comedic run-time. No doubt some comedic moments and general coherency were lost. Yet in the end, even if this film were more balanced, it still would be little more than a comedic fantasy involving a boat, some dudes and some tunes. In its refusal to address rock and roll as anything but God’s gift to the masses and a general excuse for good fun, Pirate Radio makes Almost Famous look positively insightful. This film could have been an awesome concept album, but it ends up being as distracted as a badly-mixed greatest hits CD: You might buy it out of nostalgia, but in the end it’s going on the back of the shelf.
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