Richard Curtis
I Love Radio Rock

I Love Radio Rock
Richard Curtis
Comedy 2009

Music must come through the speakers into your ears directly and loudly: without fear of disturbing the neighbor upstairs or sitting in front of a computer screen ruining your eyes to watch low-resolution images. No bullshit, a film like the one I'm about to describe is not a C-series made-in-USA trash, and it needs to be seen in the cinema seated on a comfortable chair. It may not be a landmark, but it is a great comedy, indeed, and for how it was acted and the soundtrack chosen, it deserves, from my point of view, the 7 euros requested.

Philip Seymour Hoffman has come a long way. The first time I saw him was in the cast of "The Big Lebowski" when he was playing an awkward butler. That chubby guy took notes and indeed, in "I Love Radio Rock", the Count he plays with great verve has something of Jeff Bridges' legendary Dude. It's not new, but Hoffman once again confirms himself as an actor of superior and eclectic talent. Take the recent "The Savages" (a dramatic film from two years ago) and this "I Love Radio Rock" and watch his eyes, movements, and expressions. Night and day, black and white maintaining quality levels that are hard to reach for many. Oscar or no Oscar, this actor has become a certainty over the years and on the other hand from someone who debuts with a little film like "Scent Of A Woman"... But let's not digress. The Count in this film is the exciting battering ram of a crew of crazy revolutionary and transgressive DJs, led by the atypical Lord Quentin (Bill Nighy) on a ship from the North Sea, broadcasting on “Radio Rock” rock'n roll 24 hours a day on medium waves. To hell with bourgeois respectability, they reach 20 million listeners in the U.K., becoming a drug: an indispensable outlet that British teenagers cling to in the mid-’60s, when rock was in its golden age.

The story is simple. The government under the guise of the bastard, cynical, and sour minister of the moment (a heavily made-up Branagh truly masterful in interpreting and fully delivering this stereotypical character) declares war on pirate radios. How the film ends is secondary. What happens in between deserves to be highlighted. We enter the bulkheads of the floating station thanks to the sudden arrival of Quentin's godson, Carl. An adolescent to mold, clay to be shaped at will on the love boat. Here, in a concentrated divine immorality in the style of "Animal House," he grows up experiencing love, disappointment, friendship, and the joy of life. Seasoned with a sarcastic humor, moments of pure rivalry and others of extreme elation, we get to know, thanks to a frenetic rhythm, the different characters that make up an absurd, varied team united by a single passion: rock music. The continuous excesses, the melancholic moments, and even the frightening ones of an existence at the edge are brilliantly served by an endless soundtrack which is not merely a delicious backdrop, but an invisible leading character added as it ranges from Hendrix, Smoke, Who, Jeff Beck, The Kinks, The Turtles, Cat Stevens etc... and the notes link, unite with the images.

It's lovely when you hear a cinema room laughing heartily and indeed, Richard Curtis (author of "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill" and "Love Actually") has written quite a number of very successful scenes for a handful of good/great actors who rendered them at their best. If we want to act as conceited critics, I should say that the film might start perhaps too fast. The first half is indeed a burst of brief fireworks, a sequence in which you almost don't have time to digest a gag before another is shot out. The finale is more than exaggerated, a total triumph, but in the end, it's precisely the excess and going beyond which is the real backbone of this film, embodying and overemphasizing the spirit of those years that unfortunately I have not experienced. What matters in the end, damn it, is that for two hours I had an absolute blast.