The Commitments (1991)

My friends had a band in high school that broke up when the bass player started sleeping with the drummer. Not a big issue, but the guitar player wanted to sleep with the bass player so it became a big issue. Teenagers and adults have those kinds of troubles in common.

     The main issue of The Commitments is not the drive or talent of the band being formed, but the fact that they are almost a dozen people. Jimmy (Robert Arkins) formed the group to play damn good soul music and for the most part the people do that. Too bad that the singer is a jerk, the main horn player might be a giant liar, and everyone wants something just out of their reach: fame.

     The movie gets a lot of mileage out of montages. The first is the best as half of Dublin shows up and Jimmy's house to join the band. As he turns away goths and Barry Manilow fans, we get a breadth of the people who want more in the city. They play and sing and blow bagpipes until the humor is dragged out in force, then one guy shows up at the end to put a button on the scene thinking he was lining up to buy drugs. A perfect encapsulation of the humor of the movie that pushes and pushes and right when the joke is played out gives one more line to round everything out.

     Those montages, including a later practice montage, round out the world director Alan Parker is creating. By all accounts, this ramshackle existence on the edge of poverty and shaking off the 1980s is not the Dublin that actually existed at the time. The city was a bustling center of music if not economics that does not resemble the run down near squalor the movie represents. The colorful cast of characters might have existed on those streets, but they shared space with the business men and successful acts that filled most urban areas of the early 1990s. But that world in the movie gives our band a place to rise from, an opportunity to be a bright spot and an unlikely set of heroes lighting a fire in a dark and wet world.

     And the music is a jolt of fire. Besides the manic acting and the turbulent nature of the band, the music is a hell of a ride. Each actor was chosen for their music skill above their acting, yet all do amazing at both. Apparently only Johnny Murphy, playing the possibly liar professional musician Joey "The Lips" Fagan, did not have any major music training. This extends to the other side with Andrew Strong, the egotistical singer Deco, who was sixteen years-old when he strutted around the stage with a voice that sounds way older than his years.

     Mixed in are some surreal moments and characters. A pair of twins always speaks together. The first gig is at a church for a "Heroin Kills" benefit. These moments are feast and fleeting but allow the sad environment to make way for the light the band is bringing when they play while also giving the whole thing a reason to fall apart. Sometimes the world does not make sense, but that can be a silly thing.

     Well acted and directed, catch this funny musical comedy as soon as you can. Follow it up with Sing Street for the teenage version.