By Ashley Bradley/ne news editor
If anyone would ever call a movie “punk,” Pirate Radio would be it.
The movie is, to put it simply, about a group of guys and a lesbian who live on a boat and play whatever they want, mostly rock music, without being censored. Because the British government thinks people listening to this type of music have “low morals,” it decides to do anything possible to take the radio station off the air.
“That’s the whole part of being the government. If we don’t like something, we can make it illegal,” says Sir Alistair Dormandy, played by Kenneth Branagh (Valkyrie, Hamlet).
Throughout the movie, the group of people living on the rock radio ship, anchored outside of Britain, get themselves into tons of shenanigans.
Felicity, played by Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd), is the only girl allowed to live on the ship because of a strict “no girls allowed” rule. They decide Felicity can stay because she is a lesbian and because she can cook. The rest of the crew tends to fight over females because they come aboard so rarely.
Though frustrating and infuriating sometimes, it gives the movie a definite reality. Of course, men are going to fight over girls if they rarely see them. Of course, women will have sex with any of them because they run a radio station that “2 million” people listen to.
The two-hour-and-nine-minute movie is packed with great known and unknown actors.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, Doubt) plays The Count, who is one of the main DJs on the station. He’s a great choice to play the only American on the boat.
Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) plays the chubby DJ who gets girls only because he’s on the radio station. To show how classy this movie is, he also is the butt of a crude, disgusting poop joke.
But best of all, Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords, Yes Man) plays the annoying guy everyone makes fun of. He believes everyone’s laughing with him, not at him, which isn’t the case most of the time.
The best thing about Pirate Radio is absolutely the soundtrack … not because the movie sucked, but because the music is so great. Music from artists including The Kinks, The Who and David Bowie are trickled throughout the story at times that make the movie fluid. During a dark point in the film, The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” blasted out of the theater’s speakers. There was nothing else to do but laugh and clap as loud as possible. Many moments were like this.
This movie was inspired by a true story, and if it’s in any way true, then those bloody Brits were lucky to have lived it.
