Full of Anachronisms and Toilet Jokes

Rating: 3/10 (5 July 2011)

This film purports to recreate, as it says in the opening scenes, 1966, a heyday of British rock'n'roll. Pirate radio was shut down in late 1967. So it is baffling that the movie is loaded with references to the late 60s and even the early 70s--in its characters, clothes, and songs, esp. (one Dj is an ancient, apparently 55-year old hippie, as though he teleported in from some 1990 film). Two songs associated with American top-40 radio in 1969 (released in late '68) are used as signatures of British Pirate Radio--the Turtles' "Elenore" and Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover." Yeh, when I think 1966 English rock, I think of the Turtles and Tommy James. Uh, no. These weird anachronisms are potentially forgivable, but the script is too full of other inanities to list: it scarcely has a plot, but is a sort of collage of idiotic, disconnected scenes and jokes. The film's real downfall is its script: 80% of the humor--I am not overstating the dumbness here--is a kind of reality- show, babbling toilet/ sex humor that would probably be abjectly eliminated from a Jackass movie. The often sundrenched, high contrast photography is nice and poignantly suggestive of what the film might have been, so I give this two stars. But the script is a no-star, frozen-dog-in-the-night "woof." I have no idea how Philip Seymour Hoffman ended up in this thing. This movie is beyond disappointing: it is rock-solid stupid.