The whole cast should be made to walk the plank.................

Rating: 3/10 (25 July 2009)

Whereas in "Love,actually" one might have imagined the director displaying a board marked "Cry now" every few minutes,here he clearly has substituted "Laugh now" with the same degree of subtlety. Ludicrous,badly acted,smug,self-referential,right-on and twee.Not a firm of posh lawyers but a description of Mr Curtis's body of work for the cinema.Almost as soporific as "The Vicar of Dibley" that displays all the characteristics it is supposed to be satirising. Pirate radio stations were largely responsible for the appalling cult of the loud-mouthed talentless egomaniacal D.J.that has plagued the airwaves for the subsequent 40 years so quite why Mr Curtis should decide to commemorate this phenomenon is a bit beyond me.The terms "bandwaggon jumping" and "potboiler" have been bandied about but of course I couldn't possible comment on that. Mr B.Nighy does his usual irritating schtick,Sir Ken and Em slum it up and count the cash,it's all too predictable for words,or at least polite ones. A sign that perhaps at last the Britcom gravy train is coming off the rails,"The boat that rocked" was not quite the huge success it's makers had anticipated. If there'd have been a funny movie to be made out of pirate radio,Peter Rogers would have made it 40 years ago.He didn't then,and Richard Curtis hasn't now.