The Boat That Rocked AKA Pirate Radio

No one expects realism from Richard Curtis, so it would be otiose to complain that pirate radio wasn’t like this, and neither was England. (No, I wasn’t there, but neither was he.) More to the point: this movie is both trite and interminable, its whimsy enervated and its wit crass–a civil servant called Twatt, a secretary called Clitt and the station itself called Radio Rock. (They called it “pop” in those days, but here I am caviling about accuracy again.) Curtis has a rep for working with actors, but you wouldn’t know it from this. Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans manage to amuse against the odds, but Phil Hoffman is wasted; Ralph Brown is effaced; and Kenneth Branagh is seemingly under the impression he’s in the sequel to Valkyrie, only this time playing for the other side.

None of this is meant to suggest that TBTR has nothing to offer. Students of bad filmmaking will revel in a final scene (nay, apotheosis) that must be endured to be believed and in a coda that is truly sick-making. (Rock ‘n’ roll never died, yeah? It’s pretty much a straight line from Otis to the Black Eyed Peas and from the Small Faces to Take That, yeah?) And this movie puts paid to The Great 1960s Debate. Of all the crimes that can be ascribed to that decade, the worst is this–it enabled the retrospective triumphalism of smug tossers like Richard Curtis.

Grade: D

The Boat That Rocked: ‘What japes!’ etc