The Boat That Rocked 2009 Trailer

The Boat That Rocked 2009 - Review

At their peak, about 25m people — more than half the population of Britain — tuned into the pirates every day. Many of the DJs hailed from Australia or America, with their bustling, highly experienced pop music stations, and the on-air stars shattered the dreary RP intonation of bow-tied BBC announcers. Inevitably, the government decided that Something Must Be Done and, in 1967, outlawed any contact with the offending ships — which meant the stations’ advertising revenue was cut off and their supply ships were barred from sailing from UK ports, ultimately starving the pirates of revenue and even food. In a classic case of woolly government principle meeting nervous populist pragmatism, the BBC promptly hired most of the pirate DJs to front the launch of Radio 1.

The film boasts an astonishing cast: Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the loud Yankee main man on Radio Rock; Bill Nighy as the ship’s owner and captain, Quentin; Rhys Ifans as a cocky, sensual mike controller, Gavin; Nick Frost as the sarky jock Dave; and Kenneth Branagh as the cold, cruel minister determined to close down the fun. It’s the kind of cast in which Jack Davenport, Chris O’Dowd, Ralph Brown, Rhys Darby, Will Adamsdale, Tom Brooke and Mad Men’s January Jones “also appear”.

Curtis was inspired by National Lampoon’s Animal House and the M*A*S*H movie, which are closer to a series of loosely connected sketches than a narrative where each scene advances the next. And ultimately everyone, Hoffman included, plays second fiddle to the real star, Curtis’s lifelong passion: pop music. The film is drenched in the tunes of 1967, and the tomfoolery on Radio Rock is constantly cutting to scenes of hard-working Brits entranced by the pirate sound. There are even choreographed dance routines.

It’s easy to assume, therefore, that Tom Sturridge plays a version of the film's director Richard Curtis: Carl, a kid from a public school who joins the pirates on their tiny boat at his mother’s behest to learn a little about the world. The basic facts are very different — Carl has no father, whereas Curtis still talks about his with immense affection — but they share a wide-eyed passion for the demented DJs who people the good ship Rock, from Hoffman’s Count (based on the pirate star Emperor Rosko) to the world’s most annoying man, Rhys Darby’s Angus “The Nut” Nutsford, who is clearly a version of Kenny Everett. “One of the things the pirates did was bring a lot of black music in from America,” Curtis enthuses at one point, “and suddenly this whole wonderful world of popular music was being pumped into people’s homes.”

The Boat That Rocked opens on April 3

Article source: The Times Online: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5896974.ece