The Boat that Rocked has great British humour, interesting and humorous characters and above all a brilliant sound track.
1960's Britain, Rock and Pop is titanic but the old and traditional ways of her majesty hold power over the music industry. Rock and Pop is broadcasted for a measly 45mins a day. However there are a few who fight the great fight for the good of our listening pleasures – Radio Pirates! DJ's of Radio Rock! They work, live and play on Radio Rock, a ship anchored just out side of national boarders. This enables Radio Rock to broadcast music back to the mainland with almost half of the country tuning in. Government Official Minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) appoints Mr Twatt to find a loop hole and discover any possible way to make Radio Pirates illegal, eradicating the air waves of the adolescent, filthy, un-holy, rock and pop profanity that is corrupting this once great empire.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (one of my favourite actors) is ‘The Count’, an American DJ that lives for music; Bill Nighy (Love Actually) is Quentin, the owner of Radio Rock; Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) is a Bi curious DJ; also appearing are Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz) and Rhys Ifans (Nothing Hill) as a living DJ Legend. The cast is just great – everybody's performances are notable, especially Kenneth Branagh (Minister Dormandy). He was so perfectly evil. I was in hysterics over the family Christmas dinner scene.
The only fault with the film is that the writers have tried too hard to give each character there own plot line. With a huge cast it's always hard to follow each individual story. Usually films stick with a couple of base characters. The film starts off that way, but I felt not enough time was spent with each character, so it is somewhat incomplete – they even seemed to forget about some of them.
The film was fresh and fun; it had atmosphere and warmth… I totally wanted to be a part of this cool scene. I was never bored and I laughed out loud many times and once uncontrollably. The music was brilliant, with all the great artists of the 60s: David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, The Who and many others. There are 38 songs in total.
The Boat that Rock was an enjoyable film and definitely worth seeing!