Roddy Doyles winning trio of comic novels depicti.

All of this sounds fine, if a bit generic: these are great songs performed ably and if they're not distinctive, they at least suit the spirit of the film's open-hearted hero worship. The Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments / The Snapper / The Van. After all, this is music for a movie, so it is cleanly produced: the horns have a punch, the guitars are crisp, the drums tight and neat, all the better to showcase the bar band growl of Andrew Strong - his Otis worship comes out like Rod Stewart crossed with Mick Hucknall - and Maria Doyle's salute to Aretha Franklin. This would seem to lend The Commitments some degree of authenticity and it does to a certain extent, as these guys can crank out familiar favorites without missing a step, but the description of working musicians suggests that there is some grit here, which there's not. In that sense, the Commitments were a cousin to the Blues Brothers, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's tribute to the very same music but where Jake and Elwood managed to hire Stax's house band (such are the perks of stardom), the group Parker assembled were working Irish musicians. As a book and film, The Commitments was all about love of music, so it didn't matter if the soundtrack offered workmanlike versions of oldies the band and audience knew by heart: as long as it was done with some, well, soul, the film would work, and the soundtrack would too. Set in the 1960s in a fictional working-class area of northern Dublin, the book examines the cruelty inflicted upon children by other children. The soundtrack features fourteen songs, most of which appeared in various scenes in the film. The film tells the story of Jimmy Rabbitte a young music fanatic who assembles a group of working-class youths to form a soul band named 'The Commitments'.

Alan Parker's adaptation of Roddy Doyle's crackerjack novel The Commitments kept its focus on the music - the classic American R&B and soul the titular workingman band cranked out in pubs across Ireland. The Commitments is a 1991 musical comedy-drama film based on the 1987 novel by Roddy Doyle.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle