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Bookmark this pageThe Boat That Rocked (2009)
Director: Richard Curtis
Synopsis
Richard Curtis tells the tale of 1960s pirate station Radio Caroline. Bill Nighy stars. Hugh Grant doesn't.
Movie review
From Time Out London
‘The Ship That Sank’ would be a more appropriate title for writer-director Richard Curtis’s latest and most disappointing entertainment. It’s a cripplingly self-conscious and self-satisfied tribute to the roistering last days of offshore British mid-’60s pirate radio before the meanies from the ministry pulled the plugs.It’s also the kind of musical comedy where the actors seem to be having more fun than any audience could ever share. This overlong, poorly paced and slackly directed ship-bound farrago not only wastes its treasury of golden oldies – Hendrix, Kinks, Small Faces etc – but magically contrives to reduce the chaotic, creative spirit of the sexual and cultural revolution to a mere mechanical catalogue of trite and surprisingly sentimental sex-drugs-and-rock ’n’ roll clichés, each fatally underlined by multiple and repetitive reaction shots.
If there are compensations, they come courtesy of a few diverting performances. The movie’s depressingly few incidences of genuine feeling come from Tom Sturridge who is sweet and appealing as the public schoolboy taken under the wing of his godfather, ship’s captain and Radio Rock boss Quentin, played by Bill Nighy as a self-parody in made-to-measure Regency-collared suits. Philip Seymour Hoffman does a turn as the radical, Emperor Rosko-like DJ in rivalry with Rhys Ifans’s self-serving immoralist Gavin.
Elsewhere, pickings are slim: the talented Ralph Brown is wasted – he’s cast as Wee Small Hours Bob, a misjudged amalgam, presumably, of ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris and dysarthric Danny from ‘Withnail & I’ – and the same is doubly true of such comic talents as Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby and Nick Frost.
Author: Wally Hammond
Time Out London Issue 2015, Apr 2-8 2009
User reviews of this film
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- Elwyn said...
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Posted on May 03 2009 10:43
Tim, I am not a fascist. In fact I consider myself fairly left wing.
However, much like Nelson Mandela, I am going to avoid trading blame and forgive you for your error/insult.
Long live the good ship TBTR, and all who sail in her!!!!! - Report as inappropriate
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- Jen said...
- Posted on May 03 2009 03:25 Grew up with this music and having enjoyed Curtis's other movies, was looking forward to a clever sitty take. But this was an insult to his audience. The London 'set' getting paid for dross. Flat jokes, boringly edited, total self indulgence. TBTR ruins Curtis's reputation for a decade.
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- Luiza said...
- Posted on May 02 2009 23:49 HORRIBLE! Do not go see it - biggest waist of time!
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- rubbisher said...
- Posted on May 02 2009 15:55 Dear Sarah, what lovely innocence. I'm glad you enjoyed the film but, as long as there are people like you who like this sort of film this sort of film will continue to be made. What a shame. Didn't you feel there was a rather forced and artificial note to it? Didn't you feel that the father-seeking, virginity-losing threads were a bit trite?
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- Ken said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 21:28 Hated this film. As bad as all the reviews suggest. No one is going to see it either. Watch out for it being pulled from the cinemas in the next week or two.
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- Sarah said...
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Posted on May 01 2009 20:45
What a rubbish review.
The film was excellent and very funny, I enjoyed the music, and I think that this review is entirely unfair and over-negative. It seems to me that comedies are no longer accepted as good films anymore.
What a shame. - Report as inappropriate
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- Tim said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 15:40 Elwyn, that is quite the most facetious comment I have heard in a very long time...
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- J.B. said...
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Posted on May 01 2009 14:12
Why all the vitriol in the comments? Some users like the movie, some don't - that's what's called different tastes. Not necessarily good or bad - just different.
According to rottentomatoes.com, professional reviewers seem to be equally divided about it. There's no reason to start spouting conspiracy theories about planted reviews or hurling insults at one another. Just accept that different people like different things and move on to more important matters. - Report as inappropriate
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- Ashok said...
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Posted on May 01 2009 13:18
'A huge, steaming, chocolatey brown turd of a film'
- spot on review Mo. Enough said. - Report as inappropriate
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- ronnieblue said...
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Posted on May 01 2009 13:16
hi roger
i can assure you i work for no pr firm
i am a 57 year old grandad who can remember the 60's
so there lol - Report as inappropriate
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- Elwyn said...
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Posted on May 01 2009 13:13
I agree with ronnieblue that this film is very bad. BUT with all that's going on in the world (wars, pig flu, mp's expenses etc) we should stop being so negative.
So SIX stars for TBTR!!! - Report as inappropriate
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- Andy said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 13:00 I agree with Roger. Carol wrote ‘Bizarre how people either love it or hate it!’ - Nonsense if you work for Freud’s you’ll love it (because you are paid to). Everyone else will or does hate it! (With the possible exception of the BBC’s My Family and After you’ve Gone viewers.)
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- Roger G said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 12:53 ronnieblue must work for Freuds. Give it up loserino, you will have a job to claw back any cash on this one! Utter pants from start to finish.
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- Helen said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 12:51 An expensive sleep!
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- Colin said...
- Posted on May 01 2009 12:50 Utter rubbish! I want my money back Curtis!
- Report as inappropriate
Cast & crew
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Emma Thompson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, January Jones, Nick Frost, Jack Davenport, Rhys Ifans, Talulah Riley, Chris O'Dowd, Rhys Darby, Ralph Brown full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Rated: 15
Duration: 135 mins
UK Release: May 1 2009
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