Keeper70

0/10

It has been 26 years since The Commitments was made and shown in cinemas. Director Alan Parker once again showed the no matter the topic his ability to produce a bench-mark film for a genre or story was strong in during the 1980s and 90s. Casting real musicians from Dublin, who had next to no acting experience, would seem to a fool-hardy, risky, process but in fact it proved a masterstroke. The very thing that could have been the weakest point of the film became the strongest as the young musicians performed naturally alongside seasoned professionals such as the dear-departed Johnny Murphy and indomitable Colm Meaney. This of course meant that the script provided by writing duo La Frenais and Clement became peppered with more swear words that they would have provided. It is to their, and the film makers, credit that these seem to have been left in thereby giving the film an even more authentic feel. It is true to say as the years progressed from 1991 many producers and directors headed towards more convoluted and dramatic storylines in film making whereas the simplicity, good nature but dirt and all realism in this story just makes it more accessible, fun and endearing. Nothing is complicated or convoluted, it is all up there in every scene and frame. You know what is going on. Sometimes I miss that in a film. The inevitable collapse and failure of the band is sign-posted early on in the film but as Jimmy ‘The Lips’ Fagan says in a beautifully poignant speech near the end of the film it isn’t whether the band is successful and become millionaires or fail and go back to the ‘dole’ but the hope that they were given that the could be part of something, that there was a way out for people like them – basically he’s summing up the story sat on a Suzuki scooterette before riding off ‘into the sunset’. "You're missin' the point. The success of the band was irrelevant - you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it's poetry." The Commitments can easily be considered a masterpiece nowadays and viewing it in 2017 it is surprisingly strong and still relevant with it’s cheerful, passionate story of hope, failure and love for life amongst the seemingly forgotten youth from the ‘wrong side’ of Dublin. Parker must be proud of making a feel-good film with great music, great performances, that doesn’t really end in a feel-good way and has not one scene that could even be said to be approaching sappy and cliché. Even if you do not like ‘old’ films (goodness I was 29 when this came out) I would recommend this film to dip a toe in the fantastic and wonderful world of Roddy Doyle and to see youngsters unconsciously acting and a film maker performing at the height of his talents.

CinemaSerf

0/10

"Jimmy" (Robert Arkins) is a bit of a restless, creative, spirit and a man who is bored with the Dublin music scene. To rectify matters, he and his pal "Joey" (Johnny Murphy) - aka 'The Lips" decide to hold auditions to create a band. A band with an unique sound to challenge the prevailing mediocrity. After some frankly hilarious auditions that pitch the tone deaf straight into the arms of the fashion police, the pair manage to assemble ten folks as different as gin and Guinness. It's no easy task moulding these disparate and lively individuals into one coherent unit, but oddly enough - despite their differences - it's the music from the likes of Mack Rice ("Mustang Sally"), Al Green & Teenie Hodges and a range of established American soul songsters who manage to provide them all with a common language and purpose as they gradually start to gain some traction amongst a sceptical community and an even more cynical music business. It's fair to say that neither "Lips" nor "Jimmy" are high on the list at the diplomatic corps, so keeping these people from - quite literally at times - tearing each other apart is no mean feat. Being a Scot of a certain age from Glasgow, it's easy for me to appreciate the old adage that for many, the escape from post-industrial poverty was music - and both Danny Boyle and Roddy Doyle work well to create and engagingly plausible story of folks whose ambition is not to win a Grammy, but to have enough money to buy their kids milk in the morning. Those they assemble for the band are a myriad of characterful and colourful folks - some likeable, some certainly not - but put them on stage and the toes start tapping and all is forgiven. For a while, at least! There's a sense of real talent here, warts and all - and for just shy of two hours it's a compelling watch that reminded me that most bands started out with a talent scouting mechanism that didn't require the likes of Simon Cowell.