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The Commiments holds a very unique place in Irish modern movie history. For a start you have to understand that the Dublin that the film was shot in was incredibly bleak in the early '90's. Unemployemt was huge, money was scarce etc. When the film opened in Dublin it was a genuine phenomenon. The biggest cinema in Dublin (The Savoy) showed the picture around the clock on it's opening weekend and it played to pretty much full houses at all shows. I watched, for the 4th time, with a crowd of approx 500 at 6.00am on Sunday and the atmosphere was electric. This was a film we could relate to, it was about us and where we lived. Suffice to say it was a monster hit in Ireland at the time. I was working in the cinema business at the time (managing UCI) and I was lucky enough to be at the premiere. When the cast were introduced one by one the roof lifted. I attended the party where The Commitments (all of them) played in a tiny club on the docks called The Waterfront and to say that was pretty special is an understatement. To this day I'm still friend with Dick Massey (Billy Mooney) and and from to time to time he will remissness about his time with the film. The Commitments only played live together three times, the Dublin premiere, the NY premiere the LA premiere. I saw then in their home town! While the movie is certainly flawed it is still a classic for it's time.

Alan Parker's brilliant directing effort on THE COMMITMENTS really shines. More than an entertaining spectacle, it has a whole lot of influence on the soul music circuit. Shots of Dublin city life are nicely photographed. The musical acts are extremely well talented and well done, if only the occasional dialogue breaks didn't interrupt the awesome sound. There could've been some more new tunes instead of old ones, but it's amazing to discover the fictional band's lead singer pull them off out of his lungs. Phenomenal! At least you can try to find the soundtrack album. One thing stands out the best: the casting. We need more of today's movies to do the same thing: to provide creative acting talents. The musical genre of modern Hollywood needed something like this to keep it afloat. Highly recommended!

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is a small time hustler selling pirated tapes and T-shirts. Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard) and Derek Scully (Ken McCluskey) ask Jimmy to manage their wedding band. Jimmy declares that they need to be a hard working Soul band. He puts an ad in the papers and it's a parade of wrong music. His Elvis loving dad (Colm Meaney) doesn't get it. Sax playing Dean Fay (Félim Gormley) is the first brought into the band. Billy Mooney (Dick Massey) is the drummer. Jimmy gets Natalie Murphy (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Imelda Quirke (Angeline Ball) and Bernie McGloughlin (Bronagh Gallagher) as the backup singers. After watching a drunken Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong) sing at the wedding, he gets him as the lead singer. Joey "The Lips" Fagan (Johnny Murphy) is the womanizing experienced trumpet player who comes up with their name "The Commitments". He hires the volatile Mickah Wallace (Dave Finnegan) as their security.

This is fun. It's great music. The cast is mostly musicians trying their hands at acting. Some of them would become quite interesting. It's based on the first of novelist Roddy Doyle's lower class Barrytown trilogy. It's heart warming and then sadly inevitable. The portrayal of the Irish lower class is one of loving profanity. The one word I would use is life. This movie is full of life. The movie could have ended with something predictable but this way it's poetry.

Who needs expensive movie stars when a group of unknowns can light up the screen like this lot?

On paper, it sounds like a failure - a cast comprising almost entirely of untrained and untested performers, set in working class Dublin, based on the novella by Roddy Doyle. By God, does it defy expectations.

Jimmy Rabbitte is a working class Dublin lad who's been collecting unemployment benefits for two years. But he dreams of bigger things, namely making it big in the music industry. He sets out to form a soul band, and assembles a motley crew of musicians and singers, most of whom don't know each other and many of whom can't stand each other.

The look of the film is gritty and realistic - nothing is glossed over. North Dublin is presented in all it's glory. The home lives of the band members are depicted warts and all - their private lives set the scene for the inevitable personality clashes that are almost as explosive as the music. In the mix is the unique character of the Irish people - at one point Jimmy enters a tenement block and, as he waits for the lift, looks over to see a boy with a horse. "You aren't taking that in the lift, are you?" he asks. "I have to," the boy replies. "The stairs would kill him."

The real star of the show is the music - this film spawned two hugely successful soundtrack albums. The band members were cast partly due to their musical ability, and the results are superlative. The stand out is Andrew Strong as Deco - would you believe this kid was only 16 when the film was made? His amazing voice belies his tender years, and suggests that he's been smoking a packet a day since the age of about four. At the end of the day with is a fine ensemble piece, much like the band. The acting may be a little wonky at times, but the hysterical dialogue makes up for that.

Most remarkably, this is a feel good film that does not rely on any of the conventional feel good plot devices. There are no group hugs, no plot conveniences, no trite happy endings. Just a shrewdly observed and wittily captured human story about people who dream of making it out of their dreary world. And isn't that something we can all relate to?

I've lived in Detroit all my life, and the great soul music of the 1960's and 70's which was created here (and is still enjoyed here) is featured throughout "The Commitments." The Irish lads and lasses really do up the soul staples, from "Try a Little Tenderness" to "Mustang Sally." The actual musical talent is reinforced by the strong character development, industrial setting (North Dublin), and masterful plot, adapted from the novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle. "Say it once, say it loud...I'm black and I'm proud," is never more irreverently humorous than when questionably repeated by Jimmy Rabbite's soul disciples. I own this film, and I could watch it over and over. The soundtrack is excellent, and the pop culture references throughout the movie are hilarious (especially during the audition scene.) This film delighted both the hard-core Detroiter in me, as well as the Irish lass. The working class Irish youth depicted in the movie are sincere, and so is their project, The Commitments. (All the great bands were a "The ...")

I first heard of the Commitments when I heard someone playing the soundtrack on their car radio. I quickly bought myself a copy and played it about 10 times a day - the music and the singing were unlike anything I'd ever heard before, even though all the songs are covers.

It wasn't until about 6 months later that the film was on an obscure cable channel, and I literally got goosebumps as soon as the opening credits rolled with "Treat her right". It was so incredible to actually see the characters performing the songs that I'd grown to love. It all became complete actually seeing the story unfold, and by the end you're really rooting for the band to succeed. When they perform "Try a Little Tenderness" I've never managed to watch that scene without tears in my eyes, it's such a fantastic version of the song and the energy Andrew Strong brings to it is just incredible, especially as he was only 16 at the time.

Anyone who loves music has to see this film, even you're not familiar with soul music - I promise you'll be hooked after seeing The Commitments!

A comedy about the rise and fall of a band in Dublin. This film is really funny and energetic, but you'll probably need to like the music to really enjoy it. The Commitments are a rough and ready group of kids that get together with an aging trumpeter Joey 'The Lips' Fagan. I'm not sure whether the cast were singers or actors before the film, but they're certainly pretty good at both during the film. The band plays 'Black' soul and the films set piece concerts make the story fairly zip along. Joey tells stories about all the famous musicians he's played with, but is he telling the truth ? When he arranges for a jam between the Commitments and Wilson Pickett we are going to find out ... or are we ?

I love this film. Everything about it might seem like it is just another cliche ridden story about the rise and fall of a band, but this movie is totally different somehow. It rises above anything previous in its genre. The characters are all both interesting, and their personality flaws are used to greatly illustrate the ending of the movie. The writing was superb, and acting from a cast of mostly unknowns top notch. The musical sequences were great, and served as an introduction for me to the songs and artists that they covered. Colm Meaney was hilarious as the very skeptical father of Jimmy.

My one line summary consists of the most profound statement in the movie. "Jimmy "The Lips" Fagin telling "Brother Rabbitte" what he has achieved, when Jimmy thinks he has achieved "Nuttin'".That being said, I am overjoyed at the amount of people giving their wonderful comments about my favorite movie of all time.I can't tell you all the people I've turned on to this movie. I remember I didn't see the movie when it first came out, then they came out with some god-awful TV series kinda based on the movie (Americanized, of course),which,thank god, met a quick & merciful death. I bought the VHS version, then the Laserdisc version, then the DVD, and am now awaiting the 2 disc special DVD, just released, to come in the mail.I have watched this film countless times & never get tired of it. I've even pretty much deciphered the dialogue(try reading the book sometime,if you think the movie is hard to understand!)One of my most prized possessions is a "Commitments" Promotional kit consisting of a "Making of" tape and a booklet about the movie in a photo-illustrated 6x15 box that I bought from a long-closed video store about 10 yrs ago. I also found the ellusive "Commitments Vol.2" CD in a "cut-out" bin about the same time.Anyway,I love the movie, and the whole premise of taking a bunch of unknown,talented, singers & musicians,with pretty much no hope of rising above their surroundings individually,and put them together to form "The Hardest Working Band in Show Business".To me, the highlight & peak of the band(and movie) was when they played "Try a Little Tenderness". It still gives me goosebumps & brings a mist to my eyes,whenever I see it.I'm still in love with Natalie & Imelda!! And Deco(Andrew Strong) only being 16yrs old!!I always hoped there would be a "Part 2", but as Joey said to Jimmy(after the band broke up) "The success of the band was irrelevent.You raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure, we could have been successful, & made albums & stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way...it's poetry". What a wonderful philosophy. That whole scene will never leave my mind.

Putting together a band is never easy. This is a refreshing look at the woes of a band... and the soul music is great too...The lead singer sounds so much like Joe Cocker it was scary.... fun and more.

Dublin, Ireland. Local entrepreneur Jimmy Rabbitte is putting a band together (which he will manage). Through friends, contacts, auditions and blind luck he puts together his band - The Commitments. He decides what music they will play - soul. We see how the pieces come together, the auditions, the skepticism from his parents, their first rehearsal, how things start to come together and their first few gigs. We also see the relationships in the band, particularly the friction. Soon they are standing on the threshold of stardom.

Wonderfully funny and entertaining with a fantastic soundtrack.

Great plot, based on a book by Roddy Doyle, showing how the average band forms and develops and the internal turmoil. Wonderful dialogue and scenes - incredibly funny, with quotable lines coming thick and fast.

However, the thing that tips the movie over from great to masterpiece is the music. Fantastic music, well made and produced with some great concert scenes to add to the vibe.

Performances from a cast of then-unknowns are spot-on. Great casting, as director Alan Parker would have been going out on a limb with many of them.

Wonderfully vibrant and funny, yet profound, movie.

I always found Alan Parker's The Commitments to be a smug film. That might be slightly unfair to the movie.

It's success spawned a cottage industry in Britain and Ireland. The soundtrack of the movie was a bestseller. The actual actors went on to perform as the Commitments.

All of a sudden every nightclub from Newcastle to Birmingham were putting on soul bands. One minute the bands that were doing Madness, The Jam or The Special songs. Now they were doing covers of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett but not one black member in these groups.

So for a brief moment The Commitments wasa cultural phenomenon.

Adapted from Roddy Doyle's novel by Doyle himself as well as Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. The latter two had experience with working class comedy and dramas in shows such as The Likely Lads and Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

Set in the working class Northside of Dublin. Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) sells bootleg tapes and dreams of managing an Irish soul band. 'The Irish are the blacks of Europe.'

His Elvis obsessed dad (Colm Meaney) is not impressed. Ever the hustler. Jimmy places an ad in the newspaper and gets equipment together for the band.

The band is assembled with three female backup singers. Natalie (Maria Doyle Kennedy) Imelda (Angeline Ball) and Bernie (Bronagh Gallagher.) Jimmy fancies Bernie.

There is experience from Joey 'The Lips' Fagan (Johnny Murphy) the veteran who has toured with bands and has tall stories of playing with the musical greats.

Their vocalist is slob Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong) who has a big voice but soon becomes obnoxious, rubbing the other band members the wrong way.

Soon the word spreads of The Commitments after they play small clubs and bars. Their interpretation of songs such as Mustang Sally and Chain of Fools prove infections.

Band tensions are not far behind. It all comes to a head when they play a gig where they expect Wilson Pickett to show up.

Overall the story was not the strong point of the movie. There was not much depth and it really had to rely more on the songs. The characters torpedoed themselves with pettiness.

Alan Parker picked up some non actors for the main roles. A few of them have gone to have good careers.

The movie led to two unofficial sequels based on Doyle's other books made by BBC Films. They featured Colm Meaney in the main role.

The music makes this a very entertaining film but there are severe drawbacks: at least to people who aren't familiar with the accents or maybe don't approve a the Lord's name in vain or the f-word said every two seconds as the Irish do in this film.

The singers in this film are good, particularly the lead singer who, supposedly, was only 16 years of age when this film was made (but he looks 30). He has a great "soul" voice. The story is interesting and there is some good humor in her, too.

The bad news is that it portrays the Irish as extremely profane people who do nothing but scream at each other and tell each other to f-off. That wears thin after awhile. Everyone says this: young and old. One hopes this isn't representative of the entire country.

The movie also has as one of the characters an older trumpet player who is portrayed as a "religious" man who wears crosses and says the Lord told him to do this and do that. Hen then proceeds to have sex with every female in the group. Talk about anti-religious cheap shot. Well, that's typical of filmmakers.

In a nutshell: great music, fairly interesting story, but profane, blasphemous and full of scummy people.

The first time I saw "The Commitments" I got surprised because it doesn't seem to be a Hollywood-like movie (talking about money) but it's a great example of good script and great performance of the actors/singers. When you see the movie, it seems to be a real-life-documentary.

The music is great! And the best of all is that some of The Commitments' members really play and sing... I recommend to buy the soundtrack (Vols. 1 & 2) if you really are a fan of soul-music. You're gonna love it!

Really... it's one of the best movies that I've seen! It's a movie made with the Soul!

I've just watched 'The Commitments' for about the 100 time and everytime I see it it's like watching it for the very first time. It doesn't get very much better than this, let me tell you that!

Some really superb acting by Andrew Strong. Even if he's not really an actor, is he. I've seen him live once, as for summer of 1998 in the very south of Sweden, and he was terrific!

However, as written the movie was really superb with lots of views of how some people live in Ireland.

That's all for me,

Regards,

Jens Jadesjö.

The Commitments is the kind of movies you seek out when times are tough, and you're feeling low. It works the same kind of magic Soul music does. It takes pain and frustration and loneliness and turns it into JOY.

I'm in Spain, on my 42th day of quarantine. Re watching The Commitments after 29 years has been one of the best and most joyful things probably in this whole damned 2020 year.

The Commitments

Blues music is not popular in Ireland because the Irish have nothing to be miserable about.

That simple reason is why the band in this comedy chose to cover soul music instead.

Determined to prove his prowess as a band manager, young Dubliner Jimmy (Robert Arkins) puts an ad in the newspaper looking for local talent to start a soul band. Among the freaks that audition, he finds some serviceable horn players and back-up singers. After weeks of rehearsal, the band garners some local success. But infighting and affairs threaten to derail Jimmy's dream.

While the songs sung are soul music standards, the new vocal talent behind the melodies brings these classics to life in a new way. Based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, this hilarious toe-tapping adaptation from 1991 still holds up today.

What's more, it's nice to see Irishmen playing instruments that aren't just empty whiskey jugs. Green Light

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In what may have been Alan Parker's (happy birthday, Alan!) best movie ever, a gaggle of working-class youths in Dublin decide to form a soul band. It's hard for say which is the movie's best aspect: the look at working-class life in Ireland, or the soundtrack. You feel a little depressed seeing people's lives - as expected, families have more children than anyone cares to count - but also feel like jumping up and dancing as they play their music.

Anyway, "The Commitments" is a really great little movie. The great soundtrack, fascinating characters, and other things combine to create something that everyone should see. I guess that any Roddy Doyle novel adapted into a movie starring Colm Meaney is sure to come out masterful (the others were "The Snapper" and "The Van").

You'd better like soul music if you're planning on watching "The Commitments". The film is all about a young Dublin man who decides to assemble a rock band from his local cohorts and friends and that's all the film is about. From beginning to end, this raucous comedy tells of the coming together of a motley crew of musicians and wannabees who manage to harmonize on stage while dissonance prevails off stage. A raucous and ebullient musical comedy which is more lively than sophisticated and more profane than profound, this assembly of first-time acting talent is a must see for anyone into that Motown sound. All others, beware. (B)

"The Commitments" burst on to the scene in 1991 and immediately garnered much critical acclaim. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing, but it was the music that would make it the film that it is. The soundtrack went on to sell millions and achieved triple-platinum status. Set in recession-stricken Dublin in the late 1980s, Jimmy Rabbitte is a young unemployed man who wheels-and-deals and dreams of music stardom. He has a strong passion for soul music and when he puts an ad in the paper for musicians to audition for the band he wants to put together and manage, he attracts a wide variety of nutjobs and pure talent. He assembles a line-up, and they hit the stages around working-class Dublin. They become a hit in no time, and with whispers of deals and contracts only down the line, and with Wilson Pickett himself rumoured to be lined up to play with the band while he is in Dublin, all that is going to hold this motley crew back is their hatred of each other.

"The Commitments" is a funny and unique film in that the rags-to-riches tale is turned upside down and we are left with a rather sad ending that evokes, as much of the rest of the film does, real life. There is nothing glamorous here, and director Alan Parker hammers it home by filling the movie with dreary, rain-drenched shots of social poverty and ruin. Choosing to film with subdued lighting also helped, as the film always appears to be in darkness. The characters are rough and very talented and they range from the mysterious and sleazy Joey "The Lips" Fagan - who may or may not be what he says he is - to the films finest attribute, the voice of Andrew Strong, who has to be the oldest looking teenager to ever appear on film. He was only about seventeen in this, but he looks and sounds thirty, at least. But what a voice. The rest of the cast are very good, and it is hard to believe that none of them went on to do much else after this - film-wise anyway. Robert Arkins who plays Jimmy vanished into obscurity in the years that followed. Andrew Strong never became as big as he should have. Glen Hansard, however, did go on to become a household name for his band and for the 2007 film "Once". Far from a masterpiece - its humour is dependent on Roddy Doyle's writing where we have a bunch of young Irish men and women roaring abuse at one another in between some fantastic musical performances - it nevertheless carries a strong personality and is a credit to the music that it celebrates, and to Irish life and the era it comes from.

There's a reason why working-class areas are darlings for sport or music-themed 'Cinderella' films: when you come from a poor neighborhood, that's almost the only options you have. So there's a truth-to-life that Alan Parker effectively explored in "Fame" and that he transposed in the Northside of Dublin with a more cynical tone, less inclined to tell an inspirational underdog story à la "Fame", but tailor-made for the 90s.

"The Commitments" is adapted from Roddy Doyle's tale of an Irish band that invented 'Dublin soul' and it is indeed a boisterous, energetic, funny and vibrant ode to soul music, invigorated by the kind of youthful spontaneousness that works like a double-edged sword as sometimes what makes great bands can also undo them. Still, there's something inspirational in the central protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins): a man with a vision and a mission so incongruous it could actually work.

Jimmy worships soul for it's the music that best conveys the emotional turmoil of the average man... much more it's a genre that requires vocals, bassists, a chorus, trumpetists, saxophonists, drummers, it's a combination of collective forces rather than the clashes of egos that killed so many bands before. "The Commitments" will commit to their music and stick together, at least on the paper.

Jimmy insists on that with the same damn seriousness as the 'Blues Brothers' who feel like they're on a mission from God. And in the film's most infamous sequence where he shows James Brown as a model to measure up to, Felim Gormley (at the sax) asks him if they're not too 'white' for that and Jimmy's answer establishes that 'skin' is a matter of opinion, and what counts is how much of an outcast you feel in your own world. That line makes a subtle bridge with "Fame" and as Parker said: any poor kid from London or Detroit could identify with the Commitments.

That said, he didn't forget to provide that Irish texture with a fair share of folk music, a little Riverdance and accents that are literally written on subtitles: "bollix" and "eejit" are new words I entered in my vocabulary. He doesn't always dodge the clichés (there had to be a bar brawl) but Parker assembled a fine gallery of young lads and lasses from Ken McCluskey and Glen Hansard at the guitar to Andrew Strong as the singer whose success went up his pony-tailed head. The Commitmettes are Imelda (Angeline Ball) the pretty one with distracting skirts, Bronagh Gallagher as Bernie the mousy fish-and-ship vendor with the sweetest voice and there's Nathalie (Maria Doyle Kennedy) who has a crush on Jimmy. As for the drummers, the hot-temper issue turns into a running-gag almost as memorable as in "Spinal tap".

Speaking of which, there are times where I wondered if Parker was so transported by the rock music he let it roll toward "mockumentary" territory. I'm not sure the film needed this musical sequence full of comical snippets such as the band rehearsing in an abattoir, a bus, on the streets women were hanging their laundry, sometimes all you need is a simple line such as "I feel like Madonna" or the group training while Bernie is babysitting. The rawness is lost in these trailer-baity scenes while sometimes comedy is best taken on small doses: the confession scene where the priest corrects Steven (Michael Aherme) about the singer of "When a Man Loves a Woman" is one of the film's highlights, and it's funny as hell.

Speaking of priest, the most inspired casting is Joey the Lips (Johnny Murphy) who talks about soul like preaching a gospel, his smile is the vector of cohesion in the whole group, and he seems to have an endless list of name-dropping anecdotes and even one that include the idol of Jimmy's father (Colm Meaney) Elvis Presley whose portrait is hanged above the Pope's. It's very unlikely that he tells the truth but the point is that you don't have to be credible to build a band but be a band first and build credibility afterwards.

And the road to glory contains many many steps: from the failed auditions with door closing on wannabe Joan Baez or Boy George to getting the equipment and then the first gigs in local churches or pubs, the real challenge isn't to prevent an eventual power outage but to contain the anger and the egos of the band members who complain about the lack of wages, the tight schedules, the arrogance of Deco who acts like a prima donna or Joey who gets all the girls ... the musical interludes make us appreciate how talented they are and yet how unprofessionally they constantly behave backstage.

I concede the arguments get a little repetitive, the film insists too much on that point as if it was trying to warn us that this time Cinderella wouldn't find the Prince... and that the collective dream would crash under the reality of individuals. Anyway, I kept thinking of "The King of Comedy" with Rabbite trying to imagine an interview to a journalist which is exactly what people with dreams of glory have in mind and that reveals maybe his desire to form a group is to fulfill some narcissistic void. But still, it was nice while it lasted and paraphrasing Rupert Pumpkin, at least we know they will never be schmucks for a lifetime, they were kings for a night, and many other nights.

"The Commitments" is one of these films that had to exist, I can imagine Parker wanting to make that film, posting announcements on newspapers, auditioning, having to handle all these clashing egos as well and coming to the final product, the making of film echoes its own point, if the film about that band could be made, then the band could exist.... And always hand-in-hand with its fictional content, the film didn't even do well in the box-office, but you know as Joey the Lips said, even that was poetry.