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The Boat That Rocked (2009)

Director: Richard Curtis

Time Out rating

Average user rating

326 reviews

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 2009-03-31 11:30:36

Time Out London Issue 2015, Apr 2-8 2009

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User reviews of this film

loservil said...

Posted on Apr 01 2009 10:18 Crap but i like crap films

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Elsa said...

Posted on Apr 01 2009 10:17 really brings back the 60s and it a good laugh

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ddd said...

Posted on Apr 01 2009 10:16 good film all round

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Nick said...

Posted on Apr 01 2009 01:47 Saw a preview tonight, Fantastic film! Short on plot yes, but the laughs are there and the soundtrack puts you right in the 60s. See it and just have fun

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CynicTony said...

Posted on Mar 31 2009 18:51 Don't believe the hype placed in the press (and online) by the PR people. Bar the soundtrack and a couple of entertaining characters, this film stinks. The two genuinely funny jokes do not make up for a paper-thin plot and agonising pace. I felt disengaged throughout. Avoid.

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sheila said...

Posted on Mar 31 2009 18:16 great film good fun epitomises the spirit of the times and the music is fabulous wll be a big hit

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frank said...

Posted on Mar 31 2009 12:23 These people leaving comments are all very wise. This film is dire, tedious, endless, plotless, character neutral, cackhanded and deeply, horribly misogynistic. All those involved should be deeply ashamed, and possibly prosecuted. Everyone out there in the world, for your own sakes, avoid. Let's watch this film sink faster than the eponymous bloody ship.

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Chris said...

Posted on Mar 30 2009 15:27 Overly long, plot-less, some excrutiatingly sexist scenes. Beyond Curtis's usual banality, this is actually bad.

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Anon said...

Posted on Mar 25 2009 11:29 Woeful, abhorrent ill-thought out and an insult to the characters of radio caroline decades ago. This has little to do with music, romance, storytelling or even entertainment. This is solely a Curts ego excersize. Hopefully this will banish him from directing altogether.
I mean it is really really bad. Don't waste a penny on it.

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Bubble burster said...

Posted on Mar 24 2009 19:48 Awfully manipulative schlock-com from a clearly past-it Curtis. Good cast. Jokes are unfunny and telegraphed a mile off. Ending is ghastly - it's obviously never meant to be realism, but it doesn't even make sense on its own terms.

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anna said...

Posted on Mar 24 2009 12:38 Real good fun, worth seeing

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