Kelners Blog
Rockadoodle-doo-doo
By Martin "poptastic" Kelner on Jun 21, 2009 - 7:49:53 PM
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You know that famous, probably apocryphal, story about Pia Zadora playing the title role in a production of The Diary Of Anne Frank, where she was so awful that when the Nazis arrived, the audience shouted "She's in the attic."
Well, I felt a little like that watching Richard Curtis's The Boat That Rocked yesterday afternoon. I was actually rooting for the Government to close the pirate stations down and put us all out of our misery - and I write as someone who absolutely loved Caroline North, my local station in Manchester, and Radio London (Big L) when I was staying with my mum's family in London.
Let me stress, I am not the type of person who goes to see a film which features a train scene, and is unable to enjoy the movie because the diesel locomotive is the wrong type. I am all in favour of artistic licence. Anachronisms, inaccuracies, misrepresentations; bring them all on in the name of art, but TBTR abuses the privilege.
Consider this, five minutes into the film; a caption tell us it's 1966, golden era of rock 'n' roll blah, blah, blah, and then we see the djs sitting around on the boat, and one of them says, "You've got to think outside the box."
Who the hell was saying "think outside the box" in 1966. I mean, why go to the trouble of making sure you've got the right turntables and cart machines, if you are going to be this slack with your dialogue? Why bother with the research?
Just compare the movie with The Damned United, another Brit flick playing fast and loose with a period in our recent history. What that movie did was give you an idea of what it was like in the 1970s, so you didn't care if the actor who played Billy Bremner looked more like Rab C Nesbitt.
TBTR did not give you the slightest inkling of what the pirate radio era was like. I lived through it. People were not clustered round their radios hanging on the djs every word like in the film. The djs were not pushing back boundaries. Nobody was saying "fuck" like Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie.
Listen to some of the archive of the pirates. Great fun, but not groundbreaking, with the exception of Kenny Everett, of course.
But Martin, lighten up, I hear you say, TBTR is a comedy. Yes, well, were there a single laugh in its 135 minutes, I should be prepared to save it from Celluloid Hell, but not even a suggestion of a muffled titter passed my lips.
And I like to laugh. I fucking love to laugh. As my brother says, "You'd laugh if the cat's arse caught fire." Want to know how desperate this movie is. There is a character in it called Twatt, and he is....ho, ho, ho....wait for it....a bit of a twat.
So what's left? Plot. The government want to shut down the pirates. They do. Not like it happened in real life, obviously. There's some bollocks about the ship sinking.
Then there are a number of pointless sub-plots. Young chap does not know who his real father is, but he's on the boat somewhere. If you have ever seen a film, any film, ever in your whole life, you will guess this plot "twist" well before it is revealed. Oh, there's a lesbian cook on the boat. She gets laid, and....oh look, I cannot bring myself to relive any more of it. I have lived through it once, and that's enough.
I think the critics were relatively kind to the movie because they will have enjoyed the hideously unimaginative soundtrack - Who, Stones, Dusty, Martha, usual suspects - and one is always a little susceptible to the hype on first release. But when you see it at 4 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon well after the hoo-ha (Prince Charles Cinema, Soho, great place to catch up on relatively recent releases) you recognise it for what it is.
To quote Bill Hicks. Piece of shit. No arguments. Piece of shit. Fact. Worst film. Ever.
