Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'Pirate Radio'

British comedy is a funny thing. It’s famous for being smart, sharp and nuanced—unlike Yank humour, which is supposed to be dumb, crude and obvious.  Or at least that’s the cliche. And it’s true that much of  North American sketch comedy, from SCTV to SNL, owes its cutting edge to the outlaw absurdism of English shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Beyond the Fringe.  But there’s more than one kind of Brit comedy. As someone who had an English upbringing, I can recall that my first childhood experience laughing my ass off in a movie theatre was at one of the slapstick ‘Carry On . . . ‘  pictures.  Don’t remember which one. Maybe Carry on Nurse.  But I remember it depended heavily on toilet gags, and I couldn’t believe I was watching it with my parents. Pirate Radio offers fresh evidence that Brit humour can be as bone-headed as the American variety. It’s the latest ensemble comedy from Richard Curtis,  who wrote The Tall Guy,  Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Notting Hill and who directed Love Actually. Perhaps more than anyone, Curtis, who has also worked with Mr. Bean, draws on the full repertoire of Brit humour, from astringent wit to broad slapstick. But in this case, despite some flashes of wit, Curtis goes off the deep end of sentimental farce, as if desperately seeking a comic tone to match the grandeur of rock’n'roll excess.

Pirate Radio looks  seductive. It’s got a dynamite cast—featuring Billy Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Rhys Ifans and Rhys Darby (Flight of the Concords)—you gotta love an ensemble with two Rhys’s. The soundtrack, upholstered with a wall-to-wall playlist of ’60s hits, is also quite fabulous. But the movie, which opened in the U.K. seven months ago, has been slow to wash up on these shores. And now it’s clear why. For all the talent attached to it, Pirate Radio is nowhere near as good as it should be. It purports to portray an authentic and fascinating phenomenon—the rock’n'roll outlaws who manned radio stations on boats outside Britain’s coastal jurisdiction so they could flaunt the country’s stingy broadcast standards and play non-stop rock. But the film is so safe, and silly,  it does a disservice to its subject, its stars and its soundtrack. Continue…