The Boat That Rocked

The Boat That Rocked (2009) takes place on a ship anchored in the North Sea in 1966. A pirate station called Radio Rock plays rock around the clock, because the BBC was broadcasting only a few hours of pop a day. The government is looking for a way to close it down. Richard Curtis wrote and directed. He stressed that the film is fiction rather than documentary; it is inspired by the real pirate stations of the era without telling the story of any particular one. The cast is large: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Chris O'Dowd and Kenneth Branagh. The commercial outcome was severe. It premiered in Leicester Square on 23 March 2009, opened in Britain on 1 April, and took only 6.1 million pounds in twelve weeks, a fifth of its 50 million dollar production cost. Focus Features had it re-edited for North America. Roughly twenty minutes were cut and it opened on 13 November 2009 as Pirate Radio. That version took about eight million dollars in America and the worldwide total stopped at 36.6 million. It runs 135 minutes. Good for: sixties music, ensemble comedy, and a British cast. Less good for: 135 minutes with no plot; it proceeds as a run of sketches. The women are written almost entirely as sexual function. Which version you watch changes the film.