Director: Richard Curtis
Starring: Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans
In Cinemas: 9 April 2009
Best known for his romcom hits such as Notting Hill and Love Actually, Richard Curtis has tried his hand at some swinging 60s nostalgia with this tribute to the wild days of U.K pirate radio.
The Boat that Rocked opens in 1966, when the BBC is airing less than 45 minutes of pop every day – that is, except for the deviant “Radio Rock” (based on the famous “Radio Caroline”) operating from boats outside British territorial waters.
The rag-tag gang of resident DJs aboard living in a 24/7 party in the North Sea on a diet of popular music to as many as 25 million listeners. The upper-class captain Quentin (Bill Nighy) rules the daggy bunch of stoned, sex-starved DJs who are national heroes for defying the government minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) as he attempts to crush their campaign with legislation to shut down the “sewer of dirty commercialism and no morals”.
Among the chaotic creative bunch is the Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an irate American determined to be the first person to say the F-bomb on British radio; chubby Dave (Nick Frost) who considers himself a ladies’ man; the unloved kiwi Angus (Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords); the resident homosexual cook, Felicity (Katherine Parkinson) and the narrator, Carl (Tom Sturridge), Quentin’s 18-year-old godson eager to lose his virginity despite all his shipmates being male (bar the lone lesbian, Felicity).
The Boat that Rocked is more reminiscent of Curtis’ eccentric TV comedies (Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley) than his big-screen work, but is more the kind of musical comedy where the actors seem to be having more fun than any audience could ever share. At times, it seems overlong and poorly paced due to its mechanical catalogue of sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll clichés. It doesn’t quite hit the mark as the timely, anti-establishment comedy it promises to be in its heavily promoted trailer.
However, The Boat that Rocked does deserve concessions for its many diverting performers including Nighy as the pinnacle of an upper-class twit, Hoffman for melding well with a Brit cast and Branagh through his caricature of the stiff-upper-lip minister: “We have their testicles in our hands, and it feels good”. Although the film could easily lose half an hour of its 135-minute running time devoted largely to subplots, the last 40 minutes keep it afloat due to the spirited rivalry between the Count and star DJ Gavin (Rhys Ifans).
3 out of 5 stars.