Appalling bad film that missed a Golden opportunity

Rating: 6/10 (7 September 2010)

Following WW2 Britain was almost bankrupt. Having given every penny to the American's for food & weapons in 1958, Britannia was so broke the Empire had to be taken apart every colony given independence by 61. The government had a plan to deal with mass starvation bread, cheese, milk, etc was rationed for fifteen years after the war. During the 60's/70's there were three TV stations on British TV and all finished by 10pm, a government directive as there was not enough coal to waste on power stations for TVs. From this economic hardship grew a youth of anti establishmentarianism, a sixties youth, somewhat different to that in the US who fought street battles over civil rights and Vietnam, the British revolution was one of youth culture.
By the mid sixties Britain was the cultural center of the world, Carnaby street was a Mecca for fashion,Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn drove Mini's, and British music took over the world. Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, T-Rex, The Who, Kinks.
Despite all this there was nowhere for all this incredible music to be played, the BBC controlled the airwaves and would not play rock music a week. And so in 1966 as England lifted the World cup at Wembley, pirate radio was born. Transmitting from ships just outside UK waters these pirate stations gave the nation the music they wanted to hear played 24 hours a day by DJ's who were radical and far removed from the stuffy British BBC presenters. It was a golden age of rebellion.
Now the history lesson is over how about the movie? It's centered around a Pirate radioship somewhere in the NorthSea. A Richard Curtis film, the man behind those British films with red buses,blackcabs, BigBen and red phoneboxes on every corner. You expect a very British feel, a very sixties feel, but somehow neither are there. There's certainly a lot of 60's crockery, paraphernalia, posters and clothes but the sense of the sixties is missing. Apart from it all being a bit too bright and sunny ( we tend to remember powercuts,candles,and rain when we think of 60/70's Britain ) it's the cast who are a major problem. Casting Director Fiona Weir has dipped from a pool of cliché Brit actors and one token American ( Seymore Hoffman ), Bill Nighy plays Quentin, the only character with any sixties feel, however the character is no different to the part Nighy played in Love Actually and is more like a has-been living trapped in the past than actually being there. The direction is not strong enough to compensate for the names and faces we are too familiar with and associated with other things. I believe it would have been far better to cast relatively unknowns, perhaps Tow Waits instead of Seymore Hoffman and Geoffrey Rush instead of Nighy. Whilst set decoration, props and costume design are marvelous ultimately the dialogue, plot and director let it fail.
The roll of Carl is disappointing. From the beginning Carl feels like a lead character but as the film progresses there is no development or lead character. The film ambles through its plot,a thread here and there but nothing of consequence, whilst all the time none of the characters are developed. Carl is seen several times with a camera and I wanted him to become involved, perhaps gradually becoming a photo journalist or something, becoming integral to the story, but nothing other than an iffy love interest.
I don't like making comparisons but taking Pirate Radio and compare it to Scandal or Almost Famous that in Almost Famous characters are well developed, the young journalist becomes engrossed in the world around him, it's not about a band being on the road or about the 70's, it's about a boy, full of admiration who through his experiences realises that the people he admires so much are just people with weaknesses and flaws. It's about self discovery, learning and all the time the film has a definite 70's feel. Scandal is biographical based on the political life of Profumo and is masterful at recreating the sixities using three actors and one popstar who were relatively unknown at the time. Pirate Radio has none of that. It's a film project that really could have gone in two ways, Curtis could have taken a literal biographical approach and told the story of real events as did Scandal. Or he could have focused on a single aspect as did Almost Famous, but instead he goes for a 3rd weak, wandering, nonentity of a story.
What is glorious about Pirate Radio is the soundtrack. Given that everything else is so weak it does leave you wondering if Richard Curtis was home one day thumbing through his record collection and though "how can I get all these great tracks into one film.. Oooh I know.. Pirate Radio" and that's where the inspiration ended. But the soundtrack is possibly one of the best movie soundtracks ever and as a huge music anorak type person I loved the end credit sequence with the album covers.
Don't get me wrong, Pirate Radio is not an atrocious film, it harmless and worth watching for a bit of fun, It's just this is the music of my youth, I recall whilst growing up, listening to Radio Caroline a pirate radio station that broadcast from a ship offshore right up until the late 1970's and I was just expecting and wanting something much more from the film, something celebrating that wonderful British 60's and early 70's culture, a film that given the subject could have and should have become a great British Cult Music movie, it's quite saddening because Pirate Radio never will and Curtis completely missed the opportunity. Instead the film is just OK. I give it three as a film and ten for the soundtrack which averages as 6.5
6/10