Writer: Richard Curtis
Director: Richard Curtis
Starring: Nobody, really.
Featureing Bill Nighy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who I forgot until I saw the poster, and this is the second most recent movie for me to watch, so I don't know if you actually need to read the review), Tom Suttridge, Rhys Darby, etc., some hot, older woman who I've forgotten and whom I don't care to look up. Oh! and Kenneth Branagh
Synopsis
I'm ahead of Leila! Hooray!
OK. In the 60s the British government didn't want people to listen to rock music on the radio, so there were some people who got ships and anchored them in international waters and just blasted music at the people all the time; and the people loved it. This is one piece of the story of one of those ships.
The Woman
shme. it had a really good soundtrack, but that's the only memorable thing about this movie. the antics were fun, but the plot seemed a little fastened on. we were both disappointed with the ending too. we wanted some type of blurb of epilogue pertaining to the story of the characters and all we got was a sentence about the pirate radio stations or some such nonsense. something that we, as the viewers, could really care less about since the legal part of the plot seemed so thrown in. disappointed.
MOster
"This is one piece of the story of one of those ships." It's a very uneven piece which can't decide how much of an ensemble picture it is and how much it should focus on the one guy who may or may not be the kid of Bill Nighy. (Bill Nighy, as always, is fun to watch.)
The movie isn't bad. You grow to care about some of the characters and you are actually worried when all of a sudden (on the SAME DAY THAT THEY PULL UP ANCHOR) they inexplicably hit some kind of rock with the boat. Since you have to do real research to understand that the movie isn't nearly as "based on true events" as the opening title cards make it seem, you don't realize that these people are characters and therefore not subject to wholesale death. I just did that favor for you, and you are eternally welcome.
Aside from the film's lack of focus--are we supposed to care about Branagh and his goings on on shore? It's a long way to go to set up a mediocre coda--its biggest problem is that its ends aren't even. We open with a minute or so of title cards giving us the historical context (and implying that the ship in this movie is an actual ship); but we don't close with a similar minute. Fictional or not, there should be some closure here. The movie is framed in such a way as to make you expect that closure.
And I'm not talking about an explanation of how rowboats and large fishing vessels arrive at the site of the sinking simultaneously.
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