A missed opportunity

Rating: 4/10 (1 April 2009)

I was hoping that a movie celebrating pirate radio, written by Richard Curtis and with a host of stars would be a festival of fun, and to a certain degree it is. However the quality on board this boat feels like the leftovers from other Curtis movies as this is clearly his poorest effort yet.
The plot, which is incredibly thin, involves an uptight government minister (Kenneth Branagh) who is instructed to remove the radio station from the airwaves, meanwhile the station is merrily going on about its business having a lovely time partying along with having various guests on board from the mainland.
But here's the problem, the government vrs pirate radio plot never gets fleshed out and what's left is just a series of self contained sketches that keep the movie ticking over until the big finish. Branagh is in no more than half a dozen scenes which appear at regular intervals in what seems an attempt by the director to say 'hey folks, if you've forgotten, he's the bad guy!'. The scenes on board are all too similar and get a bit tiresome because once you've seen all the DJ's do their thing into the mike, have a sexual encounter then have a bit of a dance to some music why bother doing almost exactly the same again for another hour.
The music is obviously from the period but is used so liberally, and by that I mean a new song at the start of nearly every scene, that it loses any emotion that it may be trying to help convey. You get a bit punch drunk. For UK readers - think of an episode of Heartbeat then times by 10, you'll know what I mean.
Performances are OK but nobody really stands out, the script is pretty flat and although there were quite a few people giggling around me at the cinema there were no real laugh out loud moments.
If the script had been tighter, the movie 30 minutes shorter, and a more complete plot been in place then it may have been a nice little movie, however.....