Pirate Radio (2009)

Great fun for us boomers who loved the music of the 60s. This was originally called The Boat That Rocked, but released in the U.S. as the catchier Pirate Radio. For those of you who don't know, the movie is set in 1966 on and off the coast of England, when the British government forbade rock and roll on the radio, which spawned radio stations on boats, playing the music to which many of us came of age.

Writer/director Richard Curtis (writer/director of Love Actually (2003), writer of both Bridget Jones screenplays, Notting Hill (1999), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and lots of stuff with Mr. Bean AKA Rowan Atkinson), based the movie on several actual pirate radio boats in the 1960s. Spoiler-ful trivia and origins here.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's (Oscar for Capote (2005), very good in Boogie Nights (1997), Happiness (1998), Magnolia and Flawless (both 1999), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), Doubt, and so many more) character, The Count, reminded me a bit of his character in Almost Famous (2000), in both cases a hip guy who will not bend to the establishment at the expense of the music. Hoffman has been touted as the star, but this is an ensemble piece. It really centers on Carl, played by Tom Sturridge (he was in the terrific Being Julia in 2004 with Annette Bening), a young man who has been sent by his mother, for reasons that become apparent later on, to spend time on the Radio Rock boat with his godfather, played by the always perfect Bill Nighy (Love Actually, two of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (as Davy Jones, with tentacles on his face), Notes on a Scandal (2006), and the very good The Girl in the Café on HBO in 2005). In the ensemble are two guys named Rhys. First is Rhys Darby (best known as manager Murray on HBO's Flight of the Conchords) who is a funny guy, playing one of the DJs, Angus (but I keep getting the names mixed up). Then, there is Rhys Ifans, an actor of great depth, who comes into Pirate Radio with a big hullabaloo, so to speak, about halfway through. Ifans was hilarious in Notting Hill, as the roommate in his underpants, scary-intense in Enduring Love (2004) (Nighy was in it, too), earnest and frustrated in Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002), and in this one his character is narcissistic and hilarious again, to name a few. Kenneth Branagh (actor/writer/director of a few Shakespeare adaptations (starting with Henry V in 1989) and others, actor/director of Peter's Friends (1992), Woody Allen alter-ego in Celebrity (1998), FDR in HBO's Warm Springs (2005), bad guy in Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Nazi in Valkyrie), as the nemesis Sir Alistair Dormandy, is so pompous one thinks he will explode. His assistant has a funny name that made us smile every time it was uttered, and the trivia noted above refers to that funny name. The rest of the cast does a great job and there are notable cameos by my heroine Emma Thompson (acted in Last Chance Harvey, Brideshead Revisited, and more), who was married to Branagh 1989-95, and January Jones, pin-up girl and star of Mad Men on AMC. Jack and I enjoyed this a lot. Not as much as A Serious Man, set in the following year, 1967, but a lot.

I did some research into the music before we saw this yesterday, and thought I was all over it, as I had compiled a list of 40 songs (32 in the link above plus 8 more from the import CD). Imagine my surprise when, at the end, the screen filled with page after page of songs, changing way too fast for me (and I'm a pretty fast reader). But more detective work unearthed a list of the 60 songs in those streaking credits. Before you click, be aware that this list contains spoilers, describing the action on screen during each song. So I've put the songs in a separate spoiler-free post for those of you who are interested.

Almost forgot! There's a wee bonus at the end, after all the music credits.