BEFORE: From bootleggers to bootleg records, from rebel yells to rebellious DJs, and from a film filled with Southern rock to one filled with British rock. And linking is easy since Burt Reynolds was in "Boogie Nights" with Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "The Invention of Lying").
THE PLOT: A period comedy about an illegal radio station in the North Sea in the 1960s.
AFTER: Hard to believe, kids, but there was a time when radio and TV stations didn't broadcast around the clock - and we didn't have podcasts or iTunes or Pandora, and people had to rely on disc jockeys to tell them what songs were good. And in Great Britain, the BBC took a particularly long time to catch on to this craze called rock and roll, so people relied on underground radio to pass the time during the 22 or so hours a day when the radio didn't play the hits.
The film looks at the crazy lives of a bunch of rock spinners (plus news and weather people, for some reason) broadcasting from a ship anchored in the North Sea - and we see it through the eyes of a young man whose mother sent him there to keep him out of trouble. I know, it doesn't make much sense to send him where there's a ton of sex, drugs and alcohol, but then it does make sense later on.
Meanwhile, the upper-crust lawmakers in London are looking for loopholes that will enable them to arrest the radio pirates, and when that doesn't work, they start to change the law itself.
Meanwhile to that, the crazy mixed-up bunch of Brits (and one American) bond with each other, fight with each other, poke fun at each other, in a way that only a bunch of ego-driven men (and one lesbian cook) can do.
Maybe I'm coming off 4 or 5 really mediocre films, but I really enjoyed this one. It had a stirring ending and finished strong, didn't get all preachy about what it all means - except that music is the universal language, and rock will find a way.
And what a soundtrack! The Kinks, the Who, Jeff Beck, Small Faces, the Hollies, the Box Tops, Dusty Springfield, the Moody Blues and many more (all can be yours on this 3-record set, for just 4 easy payments...)
I may not have been an active part of the 1960's music scene (especially since I was busy not being born yet) but it's the musical era that I'm most drawn to. I came of age in a decade called the 80's, when We Built Our City on rock and roll (before realizing that bedrock and concrete is a much smarter move) but when I got to college in the mid-80's, I reverted to the Beatles, Stones and Led Zeppelin, as all college-age kids rightly should. Now the 80's music is retro too - but I still maintain that no good music has been written since 1990. Go ahead, name one song, I dare you. (Didn't think so....)
And for you youngsters, those round black frisbee-like things are called "records", or "discs" (hence "disc jockey"). Music used to be made of solid vinyl, not bits and bytes...
Also starring Bill Nighy (last seen in "G-Force"), Tom Sturridge, Rhys Ifans (last seen in "Little Nicky"), Rhys Darby, Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "Valkyrie"), Emma Thompson, Nick Frost (last seen in "Hot Fuzz"), and January Jones.
RATING: 7 out of 10 turntables
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