The World's Hardest Working Band (The Commitments (DVD))

Member Name: naffcaff

Product:	The Commitments (DVD)
Date:	27/08/05 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Direction, First Class Acting, Superb Music

Disadvantages: Not recommended if you dislike bad language

Soul - Directly from The Northside

"We'll be playing soul.... Dublin Soul", Jimmy Rabbitte tells the first recruits to his new band in the opening minutes of this classic film.

The backstreets of the Northside of Dublin may seem like an unusual setting for a pop rags to riches film, but I have always thought that a good story will always win when put up against the latest Hollywood, special effects laden blockbuster to roll off the US production line.

Jimmy Rabbitte is a would be pop svengali, a repsected character on the Dublin band scene, but not enough to be paid well for it. Fed up with supplementing his income selling pirated cassettes he meets up with Derek and Outspan, two guitarists equally fed up with performing standards at the roughest wedding receptions.

When they ask Jimmy to be their manager, Jimmy suggests the unlikely new lead singer in the form of a drunk wedding guest who grabs the mike during Derek and Outspan’s performance. Despite the guest Deco’s alcohol stupor, he has a voice to kill for and is recruited the next day !

Jimmy orders his new bandmates to ditch their repetoire and concentrate on soul, banning them from listening to anything except Motown, Stax and James Brown. Auditions are held at Jimmy’s house, despite protests from his Elvis devotee father (played by Star Trek’s Colm Mooney) and a steady stream of losers at his doorstep are weeded out including the guy who doesn’t sing and only joined the queue as he thought drugs were being sold !

An Irish ex-Motown session man called Joey The Lips is recruited for the Trumpet, a sax player, a drummer who claims his influence as “Yer man Animal from the Muppets and three girls who would probably make good backing singers and were in the chior (and who Jimmy fancied !) are brought along to make up the new band. “I bet U2 are sh**ting themselves “ sneers Jimmy’s Dad !

Rehearsals, band changes, gigs in pokey community centres and the iron rod rule of Jimmy ensure the band gains recognition. Andrew Strong is excellent as Deco who despite having a voice to kill for, has a personality that make the rest of the band want to kill him !

There then follows a series of hillarious situations at gigs and behind the scenes as both musicial rivalry and love/sex rivalry move in to ensure the road to fame is all but rocky. All this to a background of classic soul performed so well by the actors, most of whom were established musicians. I do not wish to give anymore of the storyline away in order to avoid spoiling it for anyone.

The Comittments was originally a novel by Roddy Doyle. I read the novel after seeing the film and whilst the novel is excellent, this is one of the rare cases of a film standing out far better than the book. This could partly be due to Roddy Doyle co-writing the film screenplay with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the writers behind some of the UK’s best comedy shows like Porridge, The Likely Lads, Auf Weidersehen Pet etc. Coupled with great direction from Alan Parker, a veteran of the low budget hit British Film (Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Mississipi Burning etc) and a great cast, this is a film where everything comes together and gels perfectly. This is why I would class it as my personal all time favourite film.

If, like me, you purchased the video many years ago, it's still worth buying the DVD for the extras which include:-
A small feature-ette on the making of the film and a music video style feature of one of the songs from the soundtrack.

Summary: It's my all time favourite film. Can't add much more than that !