Pirate Radio: Review By Rama's SCREEN

--Rama's SCREEN--

It’s awesome to have Richard Curtis back because PIRATE RADIO is a comedy that just wants to have some bloody good time and nothing else. It’s the ecstasy of freedom and love of Rock n’ Roll! It’s a party boat! Phillip Seymour Hoffman leads a bunch of renegades and all you have to do is… tune in to their unadulterated fun on the high seas. Watch PIRATE RADIO and reconnect again with the real music, not some of the crappy melody played these days, I’m talking about The Rolling Stones, The Who, the real music! I love this movie!

What’s cool about PIRATE RADIO is that it celebrates sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Ya see, these are a bunch of guys who just want the world to hear some rock n’ roll, a bunch of DJs with different hilarious personalities but I’m glad drugs is taken out of the picture because that aspect would just steer the boat to a whole other drama territory that we don’t really need to go to. Richard Curtis who has entertained us in the past with Four Weddings And A Funeral and Love Actually bring back his ensemble cast humor. Hoffman is of course considered the lead, being an Oscar winner but all the other Brit actors on the boat gets a fair share of screen time and story. Curtis uses more than 2 hours of runtime to give us separate but connected episodes of each character or even significant interaction between some of them and so it’s as if we’re spending at least a year on the boat getting to know these guys and not a single minute gets wasted.. well except when they actually have too much to drink and get ‘wasted’. That’s a fun scene to watch.

PIRATE RADIO or known in other countries as The Boat That Rocked, which I thought was a better title, is simply a movie about friendship. The American DJ who calls himself The Count senses a competition when Gavin, thought of as the greatest DJ that ever lived, shows up on the boat and things get heated when Count’s friend Simon gets lied to by a girl who actually has a thing for another DJ and so we see the quirky yet dangerous way these guys would put themselves in to settle their dispute in the name of their brethren. And just like any fraternity, but this time with a bunch of middle aged men, some are overweight and disturbingly hairy, there are hazings, pranks, games to kill time, but through all those Curtis will let you see that even when one of them gets heartbroken, the other member of the group will go out of their way to cheer him up or do something silly to express apologies. It’s solidarity and no matter how bad it gets, Rock n’ Roll is the one thing that keeps them together. But there is one particular story that Curtis sets up at the beginning that sort of becomes the tie that connects all these episodes, the story of a young man looking for his father. It’s nothing melodramatic, even if it almost touches that edge, Curtis knows how to break the ice, the awkwardness and the tension and brings the mood back to happyville.

Great costume, great make-up, great art direction, if you don’t feel like you’re in the ’60s while watching this movie then it’s not the movie’s fault.

I can’t say enough about the cast. If there’s one person who can collect a talented group of people for such a great story it’s Richard Curtis, he even brought back Emma Thompson, his go-to lady. So real quick now, Hoffman is fantastic, Bill Nighy is delightful, his character may be uptight but he can be chill when he needs to be and he has a commanding presence as the leader of the boat that everyone respects. Nick Frost is carefree, Chris O’Dowd is amusing and Rhys Ifans who I still think looks like Liam Gallagher of Oasis, is charismatic. What’s equally great to watch is Kenneth Branagh representing the government that wants to shut this radio down. Branagh’s explosive anger and his need to hire someone so he can take the glory when he wins and blame it on that person when he gets the heat is absolutely brilliant. Too bad he doesn’t get to share screen time with Hoffman and the rest of the gang but somebody’s gotta play the villain and Branagh is perfect.

So let go of your trouble, forget your daily problems and watch PIRATE RADIO because rock n’ roll, my friends, will set you free

--Rama's SCREEN--