The Boat That Rocked
I'll keep this brief. It's not a great week for home entertainment releases, so I was forced to revisit a film that I loathed when it came out at the cinema five months ago.
Seeing it again on Blu-ray, I feel the same way. What a missed opportunity. We could have been treated to a fascinating story about the REAL guys who worked on these boats in the 1960s, backed by a superb soundtrack. Instead, we have a sloppy, over-long, one-dimensional comedy with cardboard cut-out characters - all of them totally unbelievable and totally unlikeable.
The humour is obvious; the use of music is cliched; the coming of age story feels like it was bolted on at the last minute to give the film "youth appeal"; and the ending is so smug it made me want to throw something at the screen. In fact, Richard Curtis is so desperate to make his audience "feel good", he had the opposite effect on me. I was siding with the stuffy Government villains played by Kenneth Branagh and Miles from 'This Life'!
Curtis is a talented writer (see 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and 'Notting Hill'). But 'The Boat That Rocked' and his previous effort 'Love Actually' prove he's a poor director.
