The Commitments (1991) Alan Parker

Alan Parker’s The Commitments is the first in the Barrytown Trilogy.   Films based on books by Roddy Doyle.  Showing a slice of life for young people growing up in Ireland in the late 80s and early 90s.  Watching from the 2020s it seems downright feral.  Children running around unsupervised, generally raising hell and a lot of fires in barrels.  There are still horse drawn carriages in the mix.  To get himself out of the grind of poverty Jimmy decides he’s going to manage a soul band.  Cue the montage of auditions, rehearsals, and curse laden banter with very thick Dublin accents.  The talented young cast do all their own singing and playing and do a great job rendering so many Motown classics.  Personalities eventually clash and it all goes to shit, but in the middle is something special.

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