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YOU KNOW a film is in trouble when you and the people around you in the theater start looking at their watches halfway through the movie. In the case of "Pirate Radio," which opens today, I started glancing at the time well before the midway mark.
By all rights, "Pirate Radio" — an homage to the days in the 1960s when pirate rock radio stations broadcast from ships off the coast of Britain — should have a rollicking good time. It has a terrific premise. It has wonderful performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman (as the ship's token American disc jockey), Bill Nighy (the station's owner-manager) and Rhys Ifans (a legendary British DJ). And it features a 1960s soundtrack to die for
with songs by everybody from the Who, the Stones and the Kinks to Dusty Springfield, Leonard Cohen and Darlene Love.But as a piece of filmmaking, "Pirate Radio" is a bloated, disjointed mess. Even cut by 30 minutes for the American release, it is still way too long (almost two hours) and the closing credits can't come quickly enough.
The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of writer-director Richard Curtis, who has done admirable work in the past as both a director ("Love Actually") and as a writer ("Four Weddings and A Funeral," "Notting Hill"). He has said in some recent interviews that he wanted to make a rock 'n' roll version of Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H," and indeed, all the elements of an Altman work (overlapping dialogue,
The problem is that while Altman was a shrewd editor of his work, a sure hand when it came to absurdist comedy and a director with a keen sense of pacing, Curtis is none of those things and lets his film get out of hand quickly.
He's clearly enamored of some characters who are superfluous to the story and easily could have been trimmed. Other characters are mere cartoons (Kenneth Branagh as the British bureaucrat trying to stop the pirate broadcasts is a particularly cardboard villain). He lets scenes go on far too long. He overuses the split-screen montages that were the lamest part of "Love Actually." The nominal dramatic spine of the film (the teenage "godson" of Nighy's character joins the crew) simply isn't strong enough to hold things together.
Moreover, the smart humor that was Curtis' calling card in previous films is missing in action in "Pirate Radio." There's no doubt that the DJs who worked on those radio ships were a raucous, rebellious bunch enamored of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But, as written by Curtis, the crew members of the good ship Radio Rock are (for the most part) a bunch of oversexed, foul-mouthed juvenile delinquents so overloaded with ludicrous quirks that they cease to become characters early on.
About the only thing Curtis gets right in terms of channeling "M*A*S*H" is a misogynistic streak. Curtis has written lovely roles for some very good actresses (Julia Roberts, Laura Linney, Renee Zellweger, Emma Thompson) in the past, but here he has nothing to offer Thompson (in an uncredited cameo), up-and-coming Talulah Riley (from the most recent "Pride & Prejudice") or January Jones (Betty Draper on "Mad Men").
The zenith of the film comes at the end, an absolutely silly sequence (and not in a good, Monty Python kind of way) that suggests Curtis had no idea how to wrap up his story.
Rock 'n' roll may never die but "Pirate Radio" does — a long, slow death. But do grab the soundtrack; it's a killer.
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