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Pirate Radio was such a disappointment.

There was so much potential there. You had this boat full of this amazing cast of characters doing amazing, awesome stuff. They were making history, breaking the rules, and doing all sorts of crazy things on that boat. Any number of plots could have been drawn from that. Any number of interesting events could have happened. Or, alternatively, they could have done a documentary with some re-enacted portions, and really given me information about this cool set of events in the history of the UK.

Instead, they made Pirate Radio, which was boring and stupid.

Basically, this movie was a series of completely disconnected scenes. People entered those scenes with no background or character development, simply because they were there in history, I guess. The movie made no attempt to explain who they were, or why they were there. There were so many characters, you never give a crap about any of them, because none of them are given enough time, even if you pretend this is a movie about an ensemble cast. Things happen to these characters, and you shrug, because it amounts to nothing. I guess he found his father. I guess he got the girl. You’re given no reason to care, although the movie certainly seems to expect you to.

Similarly, the movie is constantly cutting to legislators who are trying to shut down pirate radio. However, nothing in those scenes have any effect on what’s going on in the boat until the very last event. Huge portions of the movie are dedicated to showing what’s going on in the government, and none of it matters until they pass the law at the end. It’s a complete waste of time.

Other than that, you have lots and lots of screen time dedicated to showing random people listening to the radio and dancing. Sometimes they are on the toilet for no reason. This is apparently of the utmost importance, because they show this constantly, as if the viewer didn’t understand 5 minutes in that lots of people listened to this station. It’s ridiculous.

There were so many potential plot threads that, if focused on, would have meant something. But they didn’t, and the end result is the feeling that the entire film was pointless. Nothing happened. There was no plot. There was an outcome, but it seemed disconnected to 95% of the action in the film, so it didn’t actually resolve anything in a way that feels good as a viewer.

Basically, Pirate Radio is exactly how not to do a dramatic re-enactment of historical events. I really disliked it, and I bet, if you sat through it, you would too.

(And for those wondering about the title, well, that’s a quote from the funniest part of the film: the commentary we were throwing at it as we made fun of how badly put together it was.)