THE COMMITMENTS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The setting upstages the plot in this story of a group of working-class (or dole-class) Dubliners who form a rock band. Seeing all those Irish singing and immersing themselves in American popular music has a sort of whimsical irony akin to that of THE SINGING NUN. But somehow a film set in this interesting city could focus on something more meaningful than its music. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
Alan Parker has been a new filmmaker for eighteen years now through at least ten major films. The way he remains a new filmmaker is by making a clean break with the past and jumping off in a new direction every film he makes. The man made BUGSY MALONE, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, FAME, SHOOT THE MOON, PINK FLOYD: THE WALL, BIRDY, ANGEL HEART, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, COME SEE THE PARADISE, and now THE COMMITMENTS. At least superficially it is hard to find any sort of pattern in these films. This time around he is doing a bittersweet adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel about the life and times of Dublin (Ireland)'s first soul band. The idea of an Irish band doing soul makes sense to the band's manager Jimmy Rabbitte (played by Robert Arkins) since he sees himself not just once but triply black. As he says, the Irish are the blacks of Europe, the Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the northern Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So he pulls together a band of North Dubliners willing to say they are black and proud of it.
As the film opens, Rabbitte is a hustler of cheap cassettes and T- shirts. His father places Elvis Presley just a bit lower than God and a bit higher than the Pope. With this minimal musical background, after pulling together a rather poor band for a wedding he is struck by the raw singing talent of a drunken guest who grabs the mike and starts belting out a song. With this dubious inspiration he starts to put together a band to feature the singing of Deco Cuffe (played by sixteen-year-old Andres Strong). In addition to Cuffe he finds an off-the-wall drummer, a frustrated jazz musician, and a forty-five-year-old trumpeter who may or may not have played with just about all the American greats. He also finds three feisty female backup singers. From there it is a toss-up if this mismatched group will tear itself apart or become a phenomenon.
The real stars of this film are the music (big surprise) and the hard- edged working-class (and lower) settings in northern Dublin. One might say that the view of living conditions in Ireland--with far too many filthy children and with so many of the adults on the dole--by far upstages the foreground story. (This may be more true for me than for other viewers because I do not really know soul music particularly well. I may have missed some of the jokes. On the other hand, a top-of-the-lung belting out of "Try a Little Tenderness" may not have been intended to be as humorous as I found it.)
Some of the humor was a bit derivative and no longer as funny as it might have been. The humorous audition montage is getting over-used after SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT, THE PRODUCERS, (the underrated) SOUP FOR ONE, and Robert Kline's (hilarious) "New National Anthem Auditions" routine. The realism of the film is undermined to very little positive effect by a pair of twins who always speak in unison.
THE COMMITMENTS is a film that us amusing at times and well-textured, but one in which I strongly recommend looking around the characters and watching instead the scenery. For me the film rate a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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