Richard Curtis and his naughty schoolboy tendencies

Rating: 3/10 (18 April 2009)

Richard Curtis' fairytale about pirate radio in the 60ties is only a bit naughty, because if you're expecting great actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost and Rhys Ifans to go all loose and limber you're mistaking. Richard Curtis flirts with some of it, but he's always sure to play it safe - like for example, they're mentioning drugs alright, but do we ever see anything of it? And the entire film actually just feels like an excuse for the actors to fool around with crispy British humor, and for the director to make a teenage boy's dream come true; a story about a gang of laid-back dudes playing rock & roll music illegally. But ship-oh-hoy, there's actually a bit more plot to this; a young lad named Carl (Tom Sturridge) arrives on board of the Rock Radio boat and is looking for his lost dad, meanwhile the government with British Minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh in great form) at the arrowhead, are doing everything in their power to shut the illegal pirate radio stations down.
Richard Curtis packs the film full of good old classic rock songs, a swinging 60ties design with schoolgirls giggling to dirty jokes and the lads smoking hard, laughable characters full of charm and pretty good jokes popping back and forth, but he doesn't move toward anything too interesting with the plot, and in the parts were Carl are investigating his daddy issues, it quickly moves towards sentimental cliché. And Curtis doesn't let anyone of the characters breath or pulsate, they're just semi-wannabe's and outsiders living for their music. Luckily, Mr. Hoffman does with his otherworldly acting skills capture some fine scenes, like when he's talking about 'the greatest days of our lives', it's a brief scene, but it's Hoffman squeezing everything out of a powerless script and making for a small bravura.
All in all, it's too much fun with the British to say this sucks, because it's incredibly enjoyable - it's just sad that it is nothing else.