This Certainly Didn't Rock My Boat!

The Boat that rocked, set in 1966, was probably the worst film I have seen in a long time and the worst spent £10 too. I cannot even tell you what the plot was, nothing seemed to happen,. The storyline was almost non-existent. A young private school boy joins the radio rock boat and its all-male crew and DJs. In the meantime the government was making every effort to silence the extremely successful station. Comprised of nearly entirely, lots and lots….and lots, of filler-scenes of different groups of people dancing next to their radios.

The film was not funny, but self indulgingly cringe worthy. It had a running time of 2hrs 10mins, which was far too long. It seemed like torture to sit through it all, but as I had just wasted £10 on buying the DVD, I wanted to see what happened in the end. They attempted to idolise the DJ’s as celebrities in their own time, but I personally found it quite sad that a bunch of 10 or so male egomaniacs where out living on a boat at sea, with no female company (apart from one lesbian cook). Crudely, once a fortnight there was a shipment of slags delivered to them, to comfort and reassure their big egos.

The only truth from the movie was the Marine Offences Act putting an end to the sea bound pirate radio stations. The government wanted to try and shut them down somehow but their popularity made it almost impossible. The frequency used by the pirate ships was said to put the lives of sailors and boats at danger, this was propaganda put out by Harold Wilson’s government of the time and was not true.

In reality I know that pirate radio brought rock and roll to the masses and was something of a cultural phenomenon. The freedom of the DJs brought new artists and new genres of music to the public. The only good part to the movie was the soundtrack, which can be bought separately. Every time the music stopped, you were brought back to the realisation that you were watching a terrible movie. Even nostalgic ex-hippies of the time, including my mum who thoroughly enjoyed working for the main inspiration of the film, Radio Caroline, went to bed early, proving my point!