Pirate Radio: Plot Overboard

Through the last fifteen years, British rom-com master Richard Curtis has proven himself a deft spinner of the screencraft, having wielded the pen behind such movies as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and the look-at-that-cast ensemble piece Love Actually.  Pirate Radio, his take on 1960s rock and the UK’s seemingly draconian limits on the playing of rock and roll seems like a platform for a promising paean to the music of the era but Curtis either handcuffed himself by minimizing the romance aboard the boat or by doing away with the plot or character arcs.

Having been immersed in the length history of rock music, audiences go in bemused by the notion of such a ban on rock music in England and have a decent idea how the story is going to end.  The UK government loses and the pop culture behemoth that is rock mows through despite the efforts to impede it.  Trying to build on those plot points leaves Curtis with a dramatic vacuum similar to Cameron Crowe’s when he wrote the boy-meets-girl, girl-likes-boy, boy-likes-girl, now what Elizabethtown.  Faced with a similar problem, Crowe tried to build in a conflicts external to the main relationship.  Curtis, however, throws every caricature he can into the mix, hoping that the comedy will result.

Kenneth Branagh, playing the government minister tasked to stamp out rock, seems to be channeling Bruno Ganz’ portrayal of Hitler in the German masterpiece Downfall with such heartless vehemence that you expect to see clips of his performance pop up on YouTube with German subtitles referencing currently enraged soccer coaches or public figures in Deutschland.  The slicked-back hair, wire rim glasses and demeanor all seem to reference the Hitler of that film and the mustache is two quick flicks away from making it blatant.

The plot of the movie is episodic and each new scene or development in the movie seems to come out of nowhere, even though the boat’s position gives everyone a damn clear view of the horizon in all directions.  Although there are no women on the boat save for one day-long visit a month, one of the DJs is suddenly engaged to get married.  When there is potential for a plot line to develop, such as the rivalry between two of the DJs for the top spot in the pecking order, it is quickly dispensed of to get back to the one story line that has no suspense.

Individually, the scenes in Pirate Radio provide ample examples for a weekend screenwriting course.  This is how it is done.  Write a scene with no dialogue.  Check.  Solid.  Write a scene with more than one emotion motivating it.  Check.  Write a scene with a character rendering true sadness by refusing to cry.  And so on.  Collectively though the scenes have as much plot as an episode of Saturday Night Live.  The film is best summed up in one scene where Carl, a 17 year old truant who was exiled to the boat after being turfed from private school informs his father of their unbeknownst connection.  The father’s muted response muted provokes the son to ask, “Well?”  Well indeed.

In Love Actually, Richard Curtis weaved together an intricate multi-plot story that reverberated with its efforts to portray all the glories, anguishes and nuances that characterize love in all its truth and illusions as well.  An ambitious task that may have fallen short, but only because of its ambitious reach.  Pirate Radio eschews such ambitions for an episodic mess that is indeed funny, but only in spite of itself.