PIRATE RADIO (Film Review) (TRAILER)

Written by Greg VictorcloseAuthor: Greg Victor Name: Greg Victor
Email: Greg@parcbench.com
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About: Greg Victor (Parcbench Culture Editor) is a historian, pop culture critic, and theatrical dramaturg and has stage managed theatrical productions on Broadway and on tour, including Billy Joel's "Movin' Out", Monty Python's "Spamalot" and more.See Authors Posts (78) on November 23, 2009

* 1/2 (out of four)
Rating: R (strong language, brief nudity, subject matter)
Director: Richard Curtis

Imagine government-controlled airwaves, with politicians deciding what music is deemed listenable. It sounds like Tipper Gore is in charge, but in fact we are talking about the British government in 1964. In researching the movie “Pirate Radio,” the truth had to be more interesting than fiction the film portrays. It tries to be a British “Almost Famous,” but fails. After a half-hour of watching it, I was looking for a plank to walk.

There was an outbreak of rogue radio stations that were based on ships just outside of British waters. Apparently, when American youth culture was “turning on” and “dropping out,” millions of Brits were tuning in. In 1967, with the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, the British government made it a crime for any Brit to work on these ships. But this didn’t stop the rock movement for long. In the end, the creation of a BBC rock station can be seen as a victory for the pirate radio rebels. How nice for them. But as an American, I kept wondering why this movie had to be made in the first place. It’s not like British radio freed rock music. Back in the 1950s, Alan Freed took care of that over here.

“Pirate Radio” is loosely based on the journey of the ship Caroline, which operated such a radio station in the North Sea during the more interesting and somewhat more romantic first half of the 1960s. If only this movie were half as interesting or romantic or funny or dramatic. Instead, we have a movie with a grand idea (artistic and social impulses that cannot be stifled by a government) but executed with no conviction. Ironically, the largest missing ingredient here is the blood, sweat, tears, energy, and passion of rock and roll.

“Pirate Radio” captures some of the cultural details of those years, but little of the spirit that drove it. Writer and director Richard Curtis (“Notting Hill” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral”) has so many holes in the script that eventually they sink the whole film. It is more a series of scenes than a cohesive film.

The highlight of the movie is the soundtrack. It includes a few of the predictable hits from the era, but is also generous in its inclusion of brilliant songs you may not have heard before (or since 1964 at least). The rock music experts in the audience will find a few mistakes in the lineup of songs (such as “Crimson and Clover,” which was not released until 1968), but these purists should welcome the breadth of rousing rock included here.

The depth of these characters leaves the entire film in shallow waters. The cast admirably attempts to flesh out characters that are one-dimensional. Like in a TV-sitcom, each has one distinguishing cute defining trait: Tom Sturridge is a teenager through whose coming-of-age eyes we meet the rest of the characters, Philip Seymour Hoffman is an American slacker in a now-typical Philip Seymour Hoffman performance (slightly pained and very aloof), Kenneth Branagh is a British government prude and anti-rock bureaucrat, and Bill Nighy is the ship’s patrician and somewhat delusional captain. The rest of the cast fill out the requisite wacky British schoolboy clichés. One nice surprise, however, is the wonderful January Jones (from TV’s “Mad Men”) as Elenore, a sunny groupie that any group would welcome.

In the end, “Pirate Radio” feels more like a 1970s TV movie about the cliché of rock than an authentic 1960s tribute to the power of libertarian ideals and anarchic rebellion. The ending can’t come soon enough to this movie that never seems to know what it is trying to say or be. At least there’s that classic soundtrack. Rock ‘n’ roll may never die, but “Pirate Radio” does. It is a long, slow death. What a long, strange trip it’s been, indeed.

Best line in the movie (spoken by the captain of the “Radio Rock” ship): “Governments loathe free people doing what they want.”