Pirate Radio
2009
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Tom Sturridge, Rhys Darby, Nick Frost, Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, Rhys Ifans, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Davenport
Director: Richard Curtis
Runtime: 135 Minutes
Distributor: Focus Features
Rating: R
Richard Curtis - the anti-Ken Loach of British cinema - is a hard guy not to like. Go on, try it. See, you cant. It’s just not possible. Sure, his movies and scripts continue to display a preoccupation with upper-middle class buffoonery, and yes, he perhaps has demonstrated something of a preoccupation with Hugh Grant’s floppy fringe. But in an age where its hip to be cynical there is something undeniably disarming about his rose-tinted view of encroaching middle-age, where real world responsibilities kind of melt away leaving plenty of time for harmless drug use, consequence-free tomfoolery, and inoffensive hell-raising.
Having made his name penning the scripts for such well received hits as Four Weddings and Notting Hill, Curtis takes his second crack at the directorial whip following the crowd-pleasing Love Actually. Loosely based on the Radio Caroline story, the name given to ships broadcasting from international waters in the mid sixties as a way around government regulations, Pirate Radio offers Curtis the opportunity to whip up an ode to counter-culture on the high seas indulging his two favorite subjects - awkward overgrown schoolboys lusting after posh totty, and music. Some might even say (harshly) that the story itself doesn’t matter and is simply an excuse to rock out to some great tunes. Radio Rock, as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s scruffy DJ, The Duke, duly announces, is “Where we count down to ecstasy and rock all day and all of the night!”; cue The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night.” But hey, who can argue?
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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