The Boat That Sank

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2010)

I was really quite disappointed with this fictional tale of the pioneering rock and pop DJs of the 60s who played their music from rusty old ships off the coast of Britain. It's a good, different subject for a film, and the cavalier reputation of these pirate broadcasters means the film comes with a built-in rebel factor that appeals to everyone who likes to think that some remnants of the teen they used to be who hid under the sheets at night to listen to the stations fading in and out still linger on within them. These guys poked a finger (or two, as it was in those days) in the face of the crusty old establishment and earned the devotion of teens everywhere and the sneaking admiration of no small number of grown-ups. The establishment is represented here by Kenneth Branagh, who looks every part the stuffy middle-aged minister who clearly rues the fact that he was born thirty years too late to revel in Britain's glory days. Branagh's character, by the way, is by far the best in the film which, given the 'zany,' anarchistic attitudes of the DJs tells you all you need to know about what's wrong with The Boat That Rocked.
So why doesn't this film work for me? Well, firstly the writers have come up with a great subject but have combined it with an incredible lack of imagination to come up with a level of writing that would struggle to beat a Carry On film for originality or laughs. It's mildly entertaining at best, and the plot is practically non-existent. This wouldn't be too bad if there were some funny set-pieces to bridge the inevitable lulls, but most of the humour comes across as, at best, simply forced, and at worst, some kind of half-hearted rip-off of those Robin Askwith Confessions films from the 70s. For example, early on in the film a 16-stone DJ (Nick Frost) comes up with the idea of swapping places with a 9-stone teen so that the young virgin can pop his cherry with the DJ's unsuspecting date in a darkened room. The idea is so lame it's almost embarrassing, and the entire sequence takes forever to build up to a micro-second pay-off.
The film works really hard to be a fun, feel-good experience, but fatally lacks the calibre of material (or likable characters) necessary to pull it off. The DJs on-board the rusting hulk of Radio Rock are amusing parodies of well-known British DJs of the 70s (that rebellious streak was soon abandoned by the young turks when the BBC came knocking), but you just can't imagine the likes of Tony Blackburn or the Hairy Cornflake behaving the way these characters do. So, starved of the material it needs to create that feel-good factor, the film attempts to manufacture it by playing a shrewd choice of popular 60s classics over endless shots of people dancing around their radios like rejects from a Twiggy musical. It's sad to see the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nighy dragged down by such pedestrian treatments as this.