Poster and Trailer: Pirate Radio
Pirate Radio has sailed a somewhat tortuous route to US cinemas. Featuring a solid cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and January Jones, the film is about a group of DJs who illegally brought rock and roll to Britain from boats in the middle of the Atlantic the North Sea at a time when the BBC played little of the new music the public craved.
It’s written and directed by Richard Curtis, a writer on Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean and Black Adder programs, the screenwriter of popular comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary and the writer/director of Love Actually.
It came out last April in the UK with the unfortunate title The Boat That Rocked and it was met with mixed reviews and modest box office. Originally scheduled as a Universal release in late August, the film was handed down to Focus Features which changed the title to Pirate Radio, shortened the film by 20 minutes (Focus president James Schamus promises “It will be a shorter, leaner version. We think it is a real crowd-pleaser.”) and bumped the release back to November 13.
Where does that leave us? Despite a checkered past, it’s got an intriguing cast, a promising setup and a terrific soundtrack including The Kinks, The Turtles, The Who, The Troggs, The Beach Boys, The Easybeats and many others.
It’s hard to tell from the trailer (after the jump) which way this one is going to go, but I have to say I hope it delivers.
Filed under: Marketing, Trailers
Tags: Bill Nighy, January Jones, Kenneth Branagh, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Pirate Radio, Richard Curtis, The Boat that Rocked
I’ve seen the British cut.
There’s definitely a good film in there, but it needed lots of time in the editing room.. honestly, I don’t know if 20 minutes is enough.
But it’s got it’s moments, for sure.
It’s certainly a very entertaining title and I thought it was hilarious. Of course it’s a matter of personal opinion but I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to see it.
Although this film is fiction, it is (very loosely) based on the story of the UK offshore broadcasters of the Sixties. The ships were in the North Sea and the Irish Sea and some stations were based on ex-WWII forts in the Thames estuary. Even the film’s fictional ‘Radio Rock’ wasn’t sited ‘in the middle of the Atlantic’!
You know, I am still madly looking forward to this.
The trailer made it look like such awesome good fun – especially when The Turtles launched into Eleanore. You couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face with a sledgehammer.
That soundtrack, at the very least, is sheer awesomeness.
I wish they hadn’t changed the title, though. Some wag on IMDB that didn’t like it titled his his/her inflammatory thread The Movie That Sucked…
I know a lot of Brits thought it was pretty bloody terrible. But with PSH, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and January Jones, it should be an interesting trifle at least.
Lately we’re getting a lot of stuff that’s fairly useless – of the blockbuster and indie varieties. I’m still anticipating flicks that are probably never going to make it here.
PR may very well be one of them.
You’re right of course Mary and thanks for the correction. I was in a hurry and the monkey who normally checks my work for factual errors and general foolishness was drinking.
Miranda, yeah the soundtrack is a big draw for me. That, the cast and the milieu are too appealing to outwardly dismiss this one, despite the mixed reactions.
Michael and Piro split their opinions, so we’ll have to see where I land.