PIRATE RADIO

A movie called PIRATE RADIO which actually looks like it was filmed on a pirate ship, and to its detriment, goes for the handheld camera and choppy edits way too often. It’s Britain of the 1960’s, the days of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and so many other milestone artists. There are nearly 60 songs on the soundtrack, all played in brief interludes. But what groovy moments do these songs certainly create.

Sit back long enough and this Richard Curtis film will grow on you. It could inspire the same kind of appreciation for classic rock that “High Fidelity” and “Almost Famous” did, albeit to a lesser degree, and it features a boisterous foul-mouthed cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the one American, is a DJ who in the early scenes pronounces he is going to use the F-word on the air for the very first time. He burns the tolerance of station owner and ship captain Quentin (Bill Nighy) to such a degree that Quentin ends up saying the most F-words. On the air.

These guys will broadcast anything, even a wedding that comes to board where Simon and his ugly British overbite (Chris O’Dowd) is marrying a spectacularly hot chick (January Jones) who may want him merely for convenience. Teenage Carl (Tom Sturridge) spent his earliest years in an all-boys school and is looking to lose his virginity, something that can also be broadcast in good fun except that Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke) steals away his opportunities. The very mod Gavin (Rhys Ifans) behaves the way Austin Powers would behave on the radio waves, he doesn’t need inspiration but himself and maybe a reference to his zipper.

Curtis' latest film is full of fast-paced and bouncy episodes, and it’s countered by stateside drama with Kenneth Branagh as a government minister who intends to shut the rogue station down. The extreme of how humorless his character is by turns funny, especially in contrast of the anything-goes attitude of our central cream of characters. Some may not like the fact that the film is full of musical montages, and cutaways to grooved-out radio listeners everywhere, but because it celebrates rock, I happen to like all of the musical-dramatic montages. I especially liked the way The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” was used in its romantic-dramatic play-out, and one of my all-time favorite songs, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum, is played loud and stirringly during a scene of ship over-flooding until the song is cut in half.

All of the playful, hip people are listening to this rogue station because the legitimate stations of that time were not allowed to play Rock. The “Pirate” gang are crusaders, they are revolutionaries, and so they are smitten with themselves. Every week a ship of girls docks with them, they are fans and they are grateful fans, the kind that arrived at a “historical” time of peace and free love. If some of the film is far-fetched, it still works because it perpetuates the outrageously upbeat myth that the 60’s was a watershed happening time.

GRADE: B