Film Reviews

The Boat That Rocked

• Rating:
• Director: Richard Curtis
• Starring: Nick Frost
• Details: UK / 120mins (15A).

1966, and BBC Radio play only 45 minutes of pop every day - but that doesn't bother pop fans, as Radio Rock, a pirate radio station anchored off the coast of Great Britain, blasts out rocking tunes 24/7 to 25 million eager listeners. Running the ship is Quentin (Nighy) and under him are DJs The Count (Hoffman), fat Dave (Frost), nutty Angus (Rhys Darby), lover Mark (Tom Wisdom), hippy Bob (Ralph Brown), famous Gavin (Ifans) and more. Loosely based on the story of Radio Caroline, The Boat That Rocked kicks off with a fun Pow-Biff-Wallop montage of the ship's DJs, their madcap personalities, their crazy shenanigans and all played out to some cracking music. But that's as fun as it gets and it doesn't get that funny again.

The Boat That Rocked isn't a movie - it's a sitcom or, worse still, a two-hour sketch show. These sketches consist of The IT Crowd's Chris O Dowd getting married, Hoffman and Ifans challenging each other to a game of chicken, Tom Sturridge loosing his virginity and Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke) being thick. The series of sketches are linked into some shape of a story by landlubbers Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) and Twatt (Jack Davenport) - a name that gets endless mileage and shows the level of humour here - in the British Government who strive desperately to get them off the air.

With Four Weddings & A Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually and Bridget Jones on Richard Curtis's CV, you know what to expect when it comes to the gags here but the gags aren't of the same quality; Curtis doesn't even bother to include his cliched drama that usually raises its head when the fun turns more serious. Hoffman, doing his Lester Bangs shtick from Almost Famous, is the only one actually acting here, and it isn't called for as mugging to the camera is first and foremost. Branagh does his best too, but he is just a villain from a kid's movie, and one half expects his dastardly plan to be foiled by a little dog, pesky kids or a falling piano.

With the large amount of guest appearances - Emma Thompson, January Jones, Gemma Arterton and other British TV personalities - hopping onto the ship and having a scene or two before departing, this feels like The Royal Variety Show or Comic Relief. But with all the dancing and the songs linked to someone's name (a Marianne links into Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne; an Eleonore links into The Turtles' Elenore, etc) this is more Mamma Mia! with sex and drugs but not as good as that sounds. Great soundtrack, though.

Review by Gavin Burke