Pirate Radio Movie Review: The Boat that Rocked

First published at American Madness on 18 November 2009.

Republished here a punctuation alteration.

*This review is based on the European release of this film which runs 2 hours and 15 minutes. The film was re-edited and shortened by about 20 minutes for the American release following criticism of its length in the UK.

Don’t be fooled by the way Pirate Radio has been advertised in the US. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character is not the focus of the film. To be sure, he is the lone American in a sea of British characters, which seems to be a theme writer-director Richard Curtis has developed (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love, Actually), but he is just one of many radio DJs living on and broadcasting from a ship in the North Sea to get around the government rules regarding rock music on the airwaves.