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Imagine living in 1960s Great Britain where the BBC didn’t play more than 45 minutes of popular music per day. No Stones, no Jimmy Hendrix, no Grateful Dead for most of the day. Enter Pirate Radio – stations broadcasting from ships floating in the North Sea in order to escape the government trying to save the British youth and uphold civilized virtues like plum pudding at Christmas. This is the background for The Boat that Rocked, which spins a fictional tale centered on the eccentric cast of characters that make up Radio Rock, an underground station that is the bane in the eye of the British government as personified by Kenneth Branagh’s Sir Alistair Dormandy. The ragtag team of DJs are led by Quentin (Bill Nighy) and The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), with decidedly weird but lovable shipmates whose real-life personas fit their spot in the radio’s broadcasting schedule. From lovable stoner Bob who’s been on the ship for seven months before his mates see him for the first time (who’s on at 3 am in the morning) to Desiree (Gemma Arterton) the lesbian cook. We’re introduced to the idiosyncratic bunch through Young Carl (Tom Sturrige), fresh from being evicted from school and sent to the boat by his mother (great cameo by Emma Thompson) to regain his footing. Only there’s more to the story, of course, which manages to weave together personal drama, family, music, romance, fighting the evil conservative government, and feats of manliness shot like we’re in the middle of a Sergio Leone Western all of a sudden. But most of all, it’s funny. As should be expected from Richard Curtis of Blackadder fame. The comedy is a mix of great dialogue, situational comedy, and broadly drawn stereotypes. Fans of the TV show may even recognize echoes of Baldrick in Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke) or General Melchett in Branagh’s thinly veiled Hitleresque government official. The cast seems to have had a blast shooting the film, which can be seen in great performances of an ensemble that doesn’t have a weak link. Branagh pretty much steals the show with his broadly overdrawn stiff upper lip conservative character aided by Twatt (Jack Davenport). Hoffman is good as always, though he finds his match in Rhys Ifans’s rival DJ Gavin, seducing his listeners by unzipping his pants on the air.
Sadly, though, for a film about the love of music, it’s the music that doesn’t get the deserved spotlight. Most songs are only heard in snippets or as background accompaniment. The celebration of the rogue DJs comes before the songs they championed and it’s their on-air antics that get highlighted while the music plays second fiddle. But it’s a great soundtrack nonetheless. There’s a certain sense of pathos throughout the film. The notion that a bunch of what would usually be geeky losers have the chance to make their mark on the world, drawn to a logical conclusion in the more than cheesy ending that wouldn’t work otherwise. But it’s a fitting end for the pirates and the music revolution they were a part of. We seem to be living in an age of pirates today, whether they’re off the coast of Somalia or sharing music illegally over the internet. And it’s the latter type of pirates that seem to have a rather odd echo in The Boat That Rocked. Because some pirates, it seems, are actually good pirates. Though I doubt the film intended to be a conscious comment on The Pirate Bay and the question of illegal sharing of music and other media over the internet, it still seems to support the pirate mentality of going against the establishment and radio stations plagued by Lady Gaga. |
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