When I saw this movie years ago on VHS, while I was in high school, it left a strong impression on my mind. An impression which I think lingered over the proceeding years. I might even say that the late night rantings of Christian Slater as the pirate radio D.J. would provide, in my subconsciousness, an inspiration for some of the elements that exist in my own Random Ramblings even today, although through a different medium, of course.

Without being conscious of it at the time it was made, this film is obviously dated, and also eerily prophetic in its datedness. Watching it from the perspective of someone living in the year 2001, what is the one thing most sorely missing from this film?

Ding ding ding. If you were thinking "The Internet", you were thinking the same thing I was thinking. Nobody (outside the world of a few elites) had access to the Internet. No email. No web pages. No online chats.

Had any of these things had existed then with the prevalence they do today, the entire concept behind this film would either be non-existent or drastically different.

Oh, and different item #2 that's significant in this context: Columbine. The Columbine Massacre had not happened yet. Way back then, over a decade ago, this film practically screams at many of the very same issues which arose around that tragedy. But because Columbine had not happened yet, the film seems like it came from a much more innocent cultural age, despite the dark subject matter it tackles.

The teenage world of clueless parents, oppressive school administrators, abusive peers, and loneliness can be a confusing time. Heck, life can be a confusing time. In this film, one shy loner kid's way of dealing with a world where he did not fit in was to take to the airwaves at night, speak his mind, entertain his listeners, and piss off the authorities. Royally.

This is, of course, the central heart of the film, and where it really shines. Christian Slater's monologues. From simulated on-air masterbation, to reading aloud love letters from his fans, to calling up members of the school faculty to question their abuses of power, to the more serious and touching moments. Speaking on the phone with a suicidal teen, or listening while a gay boy confesses being ridiculed and demeaned by members of the football team. Whatever the subject, he's on the air every night, and he's the craze of every lonely, rejected, disgruntled teen in the area.

Naturally, this anonymous free-thinking loud man is NOT well-liked by the faculty, who eventually go so far as to employ coercive tactics against students in an attempt to find out his identity. Of course, the school administrators generally make it a point to ignore any real problem the students may have, and instead focus exclusively on silencing the voice of those problems. When something so blatently bad that they can't ignore does happen, they blame the messenger instead of addressing the real cause.

The inspirational nature of this film really comes from this message that perhaps just having a voice, getting the word across, and communicating with others about what's going on could in and of itself be a solution to the hopelessness.

I loved the very end, when the picture fades to black, and over the speakers, from every direction, we hear the voices of teens, unique to the point being anti-cliché, expressing their individuality ("I'm sixteen, but NOT sweet") over their own pirate radio stations all across the country. This time, it was hard not to think a few years into the future, when a reality unknown at that time would emerge. Can anyone say "personal web page"? Good. I knew you could. Truth is stranger than fiction.

I suppose by some measures, this could be called a generic adolescent flick. It does have all the ingredients of the well-tread "ordinary guy becomes great hero and gets the hot chick" theme that we've seen a million variations on. But I liked this one because of Christian Slater's performance, and because of its strong, effectively presented pro-free speech message. It's also good as a period piece, portraying a time before the days when just anybody could put up a web page that could be read by everybody.