With ‘The Boat That Rocked’ prolific British writer and director Richard Curtis has built a film around his passion for rock music and his admiration for the offshore broadcasting that took place over many years that broadcast rock and roll music to the English public whilst the established stations like the BBC avoided rock music like the plague. The pirate radio broadcasters spurned the wraith of the British government which, in the end, through Postmaster General Tony Benn, enacted the Marine Offences Act legislation which closed down off-shore radio.

in ‘The Boat That Rocked’, the time is 1966, the ship is called ‘Radio Rock’ and a very dapper looking Bill Nighy plays the live on board station boss, Quentin, who manages to get a very disparate crew of disc jockeys to work together to pump out rock and roll music day and night. In particular, Quentin has to watch over the clash of two very large egos, that of The Count, an American God of the airwaves, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Gavin, who calls himself the greatest DJ in Great Britain, played by Rhys Ifans. Kenneth Branagh plays British Government Minister Dermody who along with his assistant, the ubiquitously named Twatt, played by Jack Davenport, set about ways of closing down pirate radio for good.

I’m giving this Curtis film a mixed review. Its certainly a film with its heart in its right place! The soundtrack is fantastic, and the way that Curtis has worked it, there are plenty of snippets of songs through the film, and often he cleverly ties in a songs theme with what’s actually happening in the storyline. One particularly memorable tie-in was the use of Cat Stevens’s song ‘Father and Son’ during a scene where young Carl (Tom Sturridge) has just discovered that disc jockey ‘Small Hours’ Bob (Ralph Brown) is his father, and is reaching out to him.

The film had its share of some very funny scenes. One of the highlights was a scene where womanising DJ Doctor Dave (Nick Frost) tries to set up young Carl’s first sexual encounter with a young woman by subterfuge, but the plan misfires.

Other aspects of Curtis’s approach were less impressive. The storyline didn’t felt tight, and there were scenes that were included that felt like clever sketches rather than being congruent to the film. The style of the film was freewheeling, and anarchic, with a non-realistic, larger than life approach that was cloying at times.The film felt unnecessarily sentimental and hammy in parts. In the end, it felt like a film that was made with a great lot of passion but just not enough finesse.