Movie Review: Pirate Radio

In what has been a disappointing movie season, Pirate Radio (released in the UK as The Boat That Rocked) provides a little bit of fun and a lot of nostalgia. Thankfully, it’s not rocket science and does not pretend to be. Opening with the Kinks, "All Day and All of the Night", it’s a frat house on the open seas. Based loosely on the true story of boats that supplied Brits with round the clock, Rock and Roll music during the 60’s when the BBC was trying to keep a lid on it. The cast makes the movie work. It includes Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, the foulmouthed American DJ and Bill Nighy as Quintin, the ships captain. Kenneth Branagh plays a whining bureaucrat who is obsessed with shutting these ships down. His real life ex-wife, Emma Thompson, has just a little more then a cameo, as the mother of the teenage boy she has sent off to get “straightened out” by living on board the vessel; probably not her best idea. The movie is filled with music everyone will recognize but people my age, 50 +, will immediately be taken back to high school parties, making out in the basement and slow dancing (especially when you hear Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”). It was written and directed by Richard Curtis who is best known for his much meatier comedies, Bridget Jones Diary, Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral. My one complaint (and pet peeve), it's too long. Ten minutes shaved off this movie would have made it better. Oh yes...go get the soundtrack!