Three young pirate radio DJs from
London go in search of the New Year’s night of their lives in Yates’s likeable homage to 90s ensemble capers
![Pirates review – Reggie Yates’s cheerful tale of friends off to a new millennium](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/03f0a24a6764eb7911a2327ae884c745bb3ecb33/0_91_6384_3832/master/6384.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=6d4e757cbdf3e6c48cdd042c498b9f8d)
Here is a likable and easygoing
comedy from
Actor turned film-maker Reggie Yates. It’s a period piece set on New Year’s Eve 1999, featuring flip phones and someone frowning over a copy of the London A-Z, muttering how good it would be if someone invented a navigation screen like the ones planes have. It’s also a playful homage to the one-crazy-night ensemble pictures of the 90s (although Yates avoids the freezeframe-voiceover character introductions that became a key cliche of Britfilm around that time), and there’s a clubbing theme that recalls Justin Kerrigan’s Human Traffic, which came out in 1999.
Three lads from London are preparing to enjoy themselves: Cappo (Elliot Edusah), Two Tonne (Jordan Peters) and Kidda (Reda Elzaouar); they’ve actually set up their own pirate radio station which has become successful enough to get them into clubs to play sets. But there’s a problem. Cappo has just started university, and he has plans to get away and see the world and do other things with his life. Meanwhile, Two Tonne has to find a way of impressing Sophie (Kassius Nelson) on whom he has a major crush. And all the while they have to figure out a way of getting into a certain club on the other side of the Thames for the millennial night of their lives.