Richard Curtis's pirate-DJ film is all at sea, writes DONALD CLARKE.
RICHARD Curtis's disordered tribute to maritime pirate radio ends with a montage of album sleeves representing the music that may never have existed if the seagoing disc jockeys had not kept the airwaves safe for rock'n'roll. You, of course, can leave the cinema. Obliged, for professional reasons, to remain in my seat, I felt a little like Alex in that scene from A Clockwork Orangewhere he is forced to watch numberless atrocities to the accompaniment of Beethoven.
Most of the AOR, Clarkson- friendly albums have been post- traumatically washed from my brain, but I remember spotting Brothers in Armsby Dire Straits. Argh! And this is supposed to be an argument in favour of pirate radio?
The Boat That Rockedis, sadly, the sort of film that would play Brothers in Armson its car radio. I have, to this point, uneasily occupied the middle ground between those who think Curtis a genius (remember Blackadderand Four Weddings and a Funeral) and those who think him a posh menace (try to forget Love, Actuallyand The Vicar of Dibley). But, having seen The Boat That Rocked, I now happily join the former camp.
After all, it takes a perverse kind of genius to make such a bad film out of such promising material.
The picture is largely set on a pirate radio vessel – reminiscent of Radio Caroline, but renamed, with an ominous lack of subtlety, Radio Rock – that spends its time pottering about calmer corners of the North Sea. On board we meet a collection of fine character actors desperately, hopelessly searching for fine characters.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is American. Chris O’Dowd is Irish. Nick Frost is fat. The magnificent Rhys Darby likes The Seekers. Alarm bells, hitherto faint tinkles, begin clattering deafeningly when the world’s coolest DJ, his name spoken only in whispers, turns out to be Rhys Ifans in a hat. Why not a donkey in a dress?
Here's how The Boat That Rockedworks. A small collection of poorly drawn personalities chew their way through a series of jokes that would have been run out of Dibley on the next train to George and Mildred's house. Then somebody plays an over-familiar pop classic that comments on the action (when, for example, a person called Marianne leaves, it's So Long Marianne) and we see a bunch of people dancing round a radio in a laundrette. Next, a slightly different arrangement of characters essays another gag from the Plantagenet era. "Lucky I gave you that condom" Frost says to his young chum in front of his "bird". we hear another golden oldie and a group of kids jig around a radio in the park.
This goes on for more than two hours and then, before you have time to storm the exit, somebody shoves a copy of Brothers in Arms into your face.
If the film were a bit better, then the glaring anachronisms would scarcely matter. ( The Damned Unitedplays fast and loose with the facts, but the quasi-fictional characters are so compelling in their own terms that one rapidly ceases to care.) Here, deprived of anything else to think about, even the least anal pop fan will begin to wonder why the median hemline races up and down from scene to scene, why many of the songs were released years after the film is set, and why the prime minister isn't Harold Wilson.
Most bizarrely, the actors playing the disc jockeys are, almost to a man, decades too old for their parts. Frost is in his late 30s. Ifans and Seymour Hoffman are in their 40s. Ralph Brown is 50, for Pete’s sake. The middle-aged Hendrix fan is a common sight now, but in 1966 such a beast was seen less often than the Loch Ness Monster.
It may seem mean to hammer holes in a labour of love. But Curtis has made such a dog’s dinner of the project that, within minutes of it leaving the quay, one finds oneself praying for the arrival of friendly torpedoes. And not just because a sinking would have stalled the advance of Dire Straits.
Directed by Richard Curtis. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Rhys Darby, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson
15A cert, gen release, 129 min★
