Rock music has always been centered around some kind of rebellion. Lashing out against authority, refusing to do what you’re told or what you’re supposed to, being an individual, doing your own thing, ditching school, being loud and gleefully obnoxious, and generally expressing yourself at will. Oh, and drugs and sex, too. Can’t forget those. Pirate Radio is the unique, semi-true story about some of the original rock station DJ’s; a bunch of people aboard a rusty merchant ship drifting around the ocean just outside the UK and broadcasting wildly popular music to the rock-depraved masses. I’ve heard complaints that it’s not exactly historically accurate, but I say it’s a perfect example of the importance of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Accurate or not, this thing is a rocking good time.
In the mid-60’s, pirate radio stations broadcasting from ships anchored outside the UK’s territory, and thus beyond the reach of its laws, but the most popular one was Radio Caroline, upon which the movie is based. At the time, less than 30 minutes a day of popular music was broadcast on legal radio stations, hence the popularity of pirate radio stations, which commanded millions of listeners. Her Majesty’s Government, however, is highly unimpressed and soon, headed by a brilliantly seedy Kenneth Branagh, sets out to take advantage of that peculiar little quirk about governmental power – if there’s something they don’t like, why, they can just make up a law or two to make it illegal. Isn’t it convenient how that works?
Well, it’s inconvenient for pirate radio stations, but convenient for the movie, because it sets up the hilarious battle between the governmental tightwads and the freedom-loving rockers of the world, particularly those floating around the ocean living to rock and rocking to live.
Just another day at the office...
Just another day on the office...
The radio family that we meet is made up of a lot of guys (and one lesbian) who just want to spend their lives rocking out, drinking beer and smoking weed. They are headed by an American known as The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman in yet another brilliant performance). There are no hard drugs in the movie, which is why it reminds me of some of the best times I had in high school and college, when such a lifestyle was more in the realm of The Ultimate Goal. Anyway, they live on the boat all the time. We don’t learn about how they get their supplies, but I get the feeling that most supplies are delivered to them or that they make periodic trips ashore. Probably in life rafts.
Into the midst of all this madness arrives a young man named Carl, the godson of the Godfather of the whole ship, Quentin (Bill Nighy, who you remember from Shaun of the Dead). And the movie also features another Shaun of the Dead veteran – Nick Frost – sporting a hilarious 60’s coif. Carl is under the impression that he’s being assigned to the ship as some sort of punishment, until the reality of the environment sinks in. Who would punish their son by putting him on a party boat? 
While he tries to figure out what he’s really doing there, Sir Alistair Dormandy (Branagh) and his curiously named assistant, Twatt (Jack Davenport), work together to find a way to show those pesky radio rockers that their highly polished boots were most certainly made for walkin’, and that that is, indeed, just what they’ll do.
Add to this colorful cast and highly entertaining some of the best rock music to come out of the 60s and you have, I don’t know, one of the best music movies of the year, at least. It would be a mistake to just call Pirate Radio a comedy, because it has a historical element that makes it feel like more of a drama and it’s not as consistently funny as a straightforward comedy like this should be, but man it’s fun! It’s immature and historically inaccurate, but come on, who’s checking the history books? We’re all rock and rollers here, right?
The Bean Meter
