Monday 7 December 2009

(Review) Pirate Radio

This is well overdue review of the film:

Pirate Radio


It takes place in 1966, during a period in time in which the BBC did not play rock and roll for more than one hour per day. The catch though, there was tons and tons of great rock'n'roll coming out of Britain that deserved its fair share of airplay. To fill the void, several entrepreneurs took ships out to sea to broadcast whatever the hell they wanted into England outside of the law's reach.

This the cool piece of rock'n'roll history that Pirate Radio covers.

Well... it tried to cover, but failed miserably.

It's got a really neat-o cast featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, and many others. The soundtrack was also wicked, and that was about the film's only saving graces.

From start to finish, it feels like several short stories loosely strung together. Plot devices are scattered willy-nilly throughout the film and addressed in a non sequitur manner. Sometimes it seems like scenes in the movie are put there just for fun. And don't get me wrong, these weren't bad, but they lacked coherence.

And the ending of the movie was just terrible. I liked where they were going with it, but it was awful. The movie flailed around for a good hour, and the last twenty minutes was where things really fell apart.

I'm a little biased because I've read a lot about what really happened back during the golden age of actual pirate radio. But the true-life story of Radio Caroline, the pirate radio station this movie is based on, is far more interesting than the fictionalized version.


Overall, Pirate Radio gets a:

5/10

It loses big points for being a badly constructed movie with poor character development and a trite, unsatisfying plot.

I gave it points though for the soundtrack, and their accurate portrayal of geeky radio newspeople and burnout disc jockeys.

According to wikipedia, as well a few other sites, there was a lot of footage cut for North American release of this movie. I'll give it another chance when I get the UK version, which as I understand is better and fills in some plot holes.

In the meantime though, I'm looking forward to seeing my first ever 3-D movie, Avatar!

6 comments:

Dave said...

I haven't seen the US version but I thought the UK version was pretty good.

Did the US version make the American out to be the main character? I'm wondering because when I saw the previews come out here the sypnosis was like "blah blah...rock and roll banned...blah blah, until ONE AMERICAN DJ and a band of renegades..." which I found very odd because in the UK version I had seen the American was just another one of the various DJ's and the kid was made out to be the main character.

XOXO said...

Well damn.
I had really high hopes for 'Pirate'.

Maybe I'll just wait for the DVD.

Jake Hammell said...

Yeah, the kid's still the main character, and the Yankee DJ is just one of the crew. I guess aside from maybe Nick Frost, he received the most screen time of the on-air guys.

His role as an American though was barely mentioned, nor did it give him any special status amongst the cast.

Aunty Pat said...

Love that you used non sequitur.
I can never make a sentence using it!
Love Aunty Pat

Dave said...

Haha so the US verison of the trailer totally is ridiculous then. I think I laughed just as hard at that the spin they put on it for the US market as anything actually in the movie:p

drollgirl said...

it "flailed around"?! sorry, but that is HILARIOUS!!! they hyped this movie like MAD in the u.s.! radio, print and tv ads EVERYWHERE! but a clunker movie is a clunker movie despite lots o' hype, so i am going to skip this one altogether!