THE BOAT THAT ROCKED is an ensemble comedy, where the romance is between the young people of the 60s, and pop music. It’s about a band of DJs that captivate Britain, playing the music that defines a generation and standing up to a government that, incomprehensibly, prefers jazz.--©Universal Pictures
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Reviews
Channel 4 Film
Richard Luck
"What's in short supply are laughs of the magnitude we expect from Curtis' best work. Sure, there's no shortage of smile humour, but the guffaws appear to have been rationed out ... Even when Curtis reverts to type, the music and the overwhelming sense of fun ensure an enjoyable journey for all who board The Boat That Rocked."
03/05/2009
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Empire Magazine
Ian Nathan
"A mix-tape of successes and failures, perhaps too light for its subject, but a silly, easy watch."
03/05/2009
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The Evening Standard
Nick Curtis
"The Boat That Rocked is a bright, breezy, if slightly aimless romp. It’s packed with star turns but the real star is the music, and Curtis rightly celebrates the pirates’ pivotal role in bringing Hendrix, the Yardbirds, Cream and Leonard Cohen to our ears. Rock on."
23/03/2009
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The Daily Express
Allan Hunter
"There is enough material here to sustain an Auf Wiedersehn Pet-style TV comedy through several series and maybe that’s the real problem with The Boat That Rocked; there are just too many characters and too many incidents of schoolboy silliness to try to squeeze into one film."
03/04/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
"It's a film, energetic and often funny, about newness, passion, innovation. It's a praise-song to artistic and social revolution."
02/04/2009
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Variety
Derek Elley
"After a lively opening hour, the pic starts to lose its sparkle as Curtis tries to develop the subplots at the expense of the script’s comic buoyancy; the film could easily lose a half-an-hour, to its benefit. Though the tempo picks up again in the final 40 minutes, the movie’s fragile sketch structure almost breaks under the mini-”Titanic” setpiece of the final reels."
29/03/2009
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"The Boat That Rocked could have worked as a silly, funny and fast romp, but it is sunk by three big flaws. First, the film is far too long... Second, though Curtis has assembled a fine cast, he doesn’t use them well... Third, Curtis has failed to give us characters we can really like."
05/04/2009
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Total Film
Kevin Harley
"But Curtis’ scrappy scripting falls between rushed mini-arcs and a shortfall of overall direction to slow-sinking effect. The bad news? It’s too long."
26/03/2009
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"LEAVE it to Richard Curtis to take a potentially fascinating story about pirate radio and its effect on 1960s British youth culture and transform it into the cinematic equivalent of Mamma Mia! for Mojo readers."
03/04/2009
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"...this ship runs out of steam, cruising on empty engines towards its Titanic-impersonating climax."
01/04/2009
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"It's a great cast, and the aggregate wattage of their collective screen presence maintains a certain level of watchability. But they are almost never given any honest-to-goodness funny lines, just warm-hearted, decaffeinated dialogue and opportunities to laugh uproariously with and not at each other"
03/04/2009
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The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Romney
"The Boat That Rocked might have been seaworthy if only Curtis had kept it cheap, cheerful and trim. Pumped up to a 135-minute prestige production, it's a bloated, joyless hulk."
05/04/2009
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"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."
02/04/2009
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Time Out
Wally Hammond
"‘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 to the roistering last days of offshore British mid-’60s pirate radio"
02/04/2009
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The New Statesman
Ryan Gilbey
"The failings of The Boat That Rocked are not restricted to a lack of wit. It has roughly as much period authenticity as an Austin Powers movie, and is suspect at the basic level of detail."
02/04/2009
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The Observer
Philip French
"As in the manner of Ben Jonson's comedy of humours, each of the DJs has a single defining characteristic (eg lechery, conceit, stupidity, innocence), but whereas Jonson's intention was satirical, Curtis's one-dimensional characters' cuteness puts them closer to Disney's Seven Dwarfs."
05/04/2009
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"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."
03/04/2009
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The Spectator
Deborah Ross
"The Boat That Rocked is pointless, shapeless, historically bogus and so emotionally disengaging you can’t even feel the soundtrack, which is tragic, as it’s an otherwise great, Sixties soundtrack."
01/04/2009
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