“Pirate Radio,” if nothing else, is able to capture a time a place as alien as anything James Cameron will conjure up in his screensaver world of “Avatar” – a moment in history where people actually cared about (and purchased) music. While watching the movie it’s hard to even imagine Americans sitting around their radios, waiting for a song, and then loving that song so much that they go out and buy the vinyl (the movie is set in 1966). A movie about music-love today would probably closer resemble “The Box” – just push a button.
When “Pirate Radio” opens, the fictitious pirate radio ship, broadcasting on a frequency to millions of British listeners, is already up and running. This saves us from any rousing sequences where a bunch of music-loving hippies (among them Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lone American, Nick Frost, and Bill Nighy as the mysterious benefactor) decide to form their own, waterlogged radio station because, well, the BBC wasn’t playing enough rock’n’roll. This is about as far as motivation of any kind goes, with writer-director Richard Curtis, the unofficial czar of the British romantic comedy, doggedly refusing to contextualize the event, politically or historically or otherwise. (There’s one reference to Vietnam, in passing, but in relation to a fistfight.)
We make our way onto the ship with Tom Sturridge’s character Carl, the godson of Bill Nighy’s character, who has reason to believe that his absentee father is one of the men on the boat. We don’t learn who his father is until much later in the film, and even then it’s more of a shrug than a revelation. There is a fairly good scene when Carl’s uptight mother (played by Emma Thompson) visits the ragtag crew, though.
On the ship nothing much happens. People pretty much just hang out, joke around, and listen to music. There’s a couple of references to “drugs” but unless somebody replaced a cigarette with a joint, then we never see any illegal substances consumed. Sex is treated with a similarly coy, giggly fashion. At some point, and for no apparent reason, the former king DJ (Rhys Ifans) returns, threatening the position of Hoffman’s The Count as the station’s top dog. There are minor skirmishes between the two, but nothing you could even classify as antagonistic.
There is conflict, of sorts, on the mainland, as Kenneth Branagh, as some kind of parliament figure, who aims to shut the ship down, by any means necessary, which includes sending his bumbling sidekick (Jack Davenport from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) to spy on the boat. He’s immediately fingered as looking far too “square” to be in a place of such free spirited frivolity.
And you know what, for the most part, you really won’t mind that nothing much happens in “Pirate Radio?” The class is amiable and funny; the soundtrack is absolutely spectacular (you’ll want to dance in the aisles); and the lush cinematography by Danny Cohen and occasionally Richard Lester-ish direction by Curtis keep things moving even when the ship is permanently moored.
It’s just that in the film’s last act, which serves as a kind of prolonged, free love version of “Titanic,” that everything falls apart. It sort of becomes a movie that’s 75% enjoyable, and 25% horrible (we’ll call it the “Antichrist” ratio), and it’s hard to recover from that 25%. The last act feels like a quick means to wrap up the story rather than an organic conclusion to the narrative. It goes on and on and on and what was a fun and sprightly comedy almost drowns (literally) in its own preposterousness.
So what are you left with? You’re left with a fun, shaggy story about a bunch of people who loved music so much that they stood up to the British government and a moustache-twirling politician. You’ll also get a wondrous soundtrack full of feel-good jams, and be occasionally overwhelmed by the power of positive thinking and music love.
But anything beyond that, stuff like character development or things actually happen, there’s very little. Until that awful climax, in which far too much happens. Curtis is happy to just hang out with his motley crew of characters, and for a while we are too… until whole thing just sinks. [C+] — Drew Taylor