The Little Boat That Could. (Rock)

The Boat That Rocked, my first foray into Richard Curtis on the big screen, the trailers were dull and annoying, giving away sod all, and it's a shame that it was so poorly handled, because whilst maintaining the annoying romantic whimsy of Curtis, the film is surprisingly good.

That is, of course, all due to the players of the piece. Phillip Seymour Hoffman unfairly being in the background more often than not, though listed first in the opening titles, is as good as ever, just relaxing and clearly having a good time. Nick Frost is more an annoyance than a nice guy, but he's got some moments. Bill Nighy is given precious little, and thus doesn't get any comedy but still has the presence. Rhys Ifans does sod all too, and it's a shame, but again, backbone to the film.

Rhys Darby, however, gets to mix his sound effects and silly stand-up with everyone else, and is a blast the whole way through. However, the piece de-resistance is Chris O'Dowd. Whilst he was alright in The IT Crowd, and has been brilliant in the actually funny ITV2 comedy FM, the only time he's been on the big screen was How To Lose Friends, and that was only a minute or two. Here he's a major character, with his own subplot of finding love, getting married and watching it all go to pot, stretching not only his clearly brilliant comedic muscles, but those dramatic ones get a solid seeing to as well. He really is the film's shining star.

The main character, well, the one who helps the audience get acquainted to the characters of the boat, Tom Sturridge, is pretty good, but he's lumbered with the messy Curtis-ness, relationship troubles, romanticism, everything you want to beat out of Notting Hill basically, except Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, he doesn't have them on him, thankfully, but he succeeds in not annoying the audience with emo/whimsy moments.

The plot is odd, a lot of vignettes for the boat characters, with a constant underlay of Kenneth Branagh and Jack Davenport working in London to shut them down, which is just dull and uninspired, it's obvious what Curtis is trying to do, but the film hits two hours ten minutes, cutting out a lot of unnecessary Branagh/Davenport gunk would make the film swifter, funnier and more of a happy film, until, of course, it's darker ending, akin to Titanic, just on a small scale.

The film is technically sound, editing is fun and showy-offy in the best way, music choices work well with the image and radio's content, CGI is spotless, some cool cinematic camera shots add to the film and it feels like Curtis' strongest.

Script is a mixture, however, the square characters are annoyingly unnecessary, some dialogue is just stretching for the jokes, and some clearly miss anything solid.
However, the film is surprisingly funny, gentle funny, but funny none-the-less. It had I think one laugh out loud moment, but lots of small chuckles and was a nice film to sit through, for a comedy it doesn't really have enough, but for what it is, I'll take it.

Overall what could have been another dire rom-com from Curtis is a bit of a softer lads flick, not that crude, only a hint of nudity, some cursing, but not too much, no drugs, lotta alcyhol and plenty o' Rock'n'Roll.

Easy to forget, but I'm sure it's whimsical enough to be devoured again and again for years to come as it is continually played on ITV2 when they have no new Jordan and Peter based shows.
8/10