Susan Granger’s review of “Pirate Radio” (Focus Features)
During the 1960s, when rock music was banned on Britain’s BBC, a seafaring band of defiant rock ‘n’ roll deejays broadcast live 24/7 from an old tanker anchored in the middle of the North Sea, beyond British jurisdiction. And when rebellious teenage Carl (Tom Sturridge) is expelled from school, his mother (Emma Thompson) banishes him to live aboard Radio Rock with his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), the dapper captain, who admiringly informs him that his mother is “a sexual legend.”
Carl soon becomes an integral part of the motley, pot-smoking, sex-starved vinyl-spinners that includes his dimwitted cabin-mate, aptly named Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke), along with amorous Dave (Nick Frost), melancholy Simon (Chris O’Dowd), idiosyncratic Angus (Rhys Darby), degenerate Mark (Tom Wisdom), elusive Bob (Ralph Brown, evoking the late John Peel) and the crew’s sole female, Felicity (Katherine Parkinson), “a lesbian who cooks.” Reigning supreme is The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an exuberant American who gleefully spews profanity and whose position is challenged when an infamously cool on-air rival, Gavin (Rhys Ifans), returns aboard.
Meanwhile in London, an odious, uptight government minister, Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), working with his assistant, Twatt (Jack Davenport), is determined to shut down the music that caters to “drug takers, law-breakers and fornicators.” To that end, he drafts the Marine Offenses Act, and Radio Rock unexpectedly springs a leak.
Basing his fictional story on the famous real-life Radio Caroline, writer/director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually,” “Notting Hill,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral”) cleverly captures the essence of the Age of Aquarius, crafting an episodic narrative, loosely tied together not only by nostalgic pop-rock classics but also by Carl’s growing suspicion that one of the boat’s debauched deejays may be the father he never knew.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Pirate Radio” sparks in with a fanciful, free-spirited 7. During the heyday of ‘60s rock radio, I got my first on-air radio job at WICC in Bridgeport, and to say this brought back many happy memories is an understatement. “Pirate Radio” really rocks with sheer fun.
