For a script that relies more on character-driven than situational comedy, it’s the perfs that count, and these are thankfully strong.
Comment
03/30/09
The Boat That Rocked (2009)
54
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:21
Rotten:18
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: The good cast and rollicking soundtrack eventually drown when this comic homage to pirate radio loses its quippy steam.
Rated: R [See Full Rating]
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Nov 30, 1999 Wide
Synopsis: Pirate Radio is the high-spirited story of how 8 DJs love affair with Rock n Roll changed the world forever. In the 1960s this group of rouge DJs, on a boat in the middle of the Northern Atlantic,... [More]
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost
Director: Richard Curtis
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Reviews for The Boat That Rocked
An embarrassing love letter to pop music and male friendship that is knuckle-gnawing in intensity.
04/03/09
For a man who loves the raucous, ebullient pop of the 1960s, Curtis's own output has been terribly, terminally square. This latest is a new low: The Film That Sucked.
04/03/09
The main problem, however, is that it's just not funny or inventive enough, and drifts towards tedium whenever Bill Nighy isn't on screen. If ever a movie needed Hugh Grant to save it, it's this one.
04/03/09
Curtis has failed to give us characters we can really like.
04/09/09
The soundtrack is the saving grace of a film that doesn’t cut it in any other direction and often gets irritatingly full of boyish rudery and sentimentality.
04/03/09
There's a bit of everything in Curtis' structurally messy, endlessly repititious comedy: nostalgia for good music, irreverent humor and sentimentality, wild deejays, virginal boy who needs to get laid, son who needs to find his father, even a lesbian cook
10/06/09
Lurches and leaks its way through a series of flimsy setpieces before gracelessly coming to a watery grave.
03/30/09
The rom-com glue that has turned every other Curtis film into box-office gold is absent. This is a listless, sketchy mess.
04/03/09
At its best, the film has a warm-hearted camaraderie that's contagious, but it's a vision of the '60s that feels like it's been test screened to within an inch of its life, with no rough edges and no real sense of danger.
04/10/09
Curtis hangs situation and character comedy on a homage to rock’n’roll. That would be fine if it were funny, but auto-pilot Curtis prevails.
04/03/09
Despite a terrific cast and a cracking ‘60s soundtrack, this overlong comedy-drama falls painfully flat, thanks to a non-existent plot, some badly judged character moments and a total absence of laughs.
04/02/09
A woebegone crew of comedy turns worthy of a bad Carry On film.
04/03/09
The movie is boisterous, sentimental and worryingly deficient in laughs for a worryingly large amount of the time.
04/03/09
Looking back for a suitably rousing episode from our national past, Curtis has alighted on Dunkirk, a tragedy narrowly averted, which he reprises as mirthless, feelgood farce.
04/09/09
The film is far too long, and between the tracks, the episodic adventures of a group of disc jockeys broadcasting rock 'n' roll from a rusty old clunker anchored just beyond the three-mile limit from the British Isles is heavy going.
03/30/09
Curtis ambitiously stirs action and tragedy into his usual mix of romance, comedy and politics, but the resulting film is all over the place. It looks and sounds great, but none of the elements come together.
04/07/09
Richard Curtis could have cast a more dyspeptic eye on his pirates and still told a compelling tale. But a love of 60s pop has got the better of him.
04/02/09
‘The Ship That Sank’ would be a more appropriate title for writer-director Richard Curtis’s latest and most disappointing entertainment. It’s a cripplingly self-conscious and self-satisfied tribute.
04/03/09
An uplifting, frothy, sexy and often funny movie.
04/03/09
Latest News for The Boat That Rocked
October 04, 2009:
New: Brand New Trailer and Poster. 
More...
September 07, 2009:
Five Favourite Films with Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis has a plan. "What I've decided is to choose recent films," he explains to RT. "I do think that often people get stuck in always saying the five greatest films of... More...
May 03, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review
More...
April 02, 2009:
Five Favourite Films with Bill Nighy
There can be few actors better suited to starring in a film about the golden age of British rock and roll than Bill Nighy. No wonder, then, that he's front and centre as part of... More...
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