The Commitments (1991)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DOES OR DOESN'T SUCCEED)

[And now for a Bust of a movie that is unashamedly feel good.]

The Commitments (1991) Alan Parker's film adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name. Stars Colm Meaney, Johnny Murphy, Robert Arkins and Andrew Strong.

In the end Robert Arkins fails to become the manager of the world's greatest (Irish, soul) band.

Son of Elvis loving Dubliner Colm Meaney, Arkins plays an ambitious young man, who will stop at nothing in order to realise his dreams of success in the music industry.

To this end he manages to bring together and equip a group of variously talented teenagers who gradually come to share his aspirations.

However, it is only the late addition of charismatic, middle-aged, veteran trumpet player, Johnny Murphy, to the group that not only lights a fire underneath the disparate bunch of wannabes, but which also ultimately leads to the band's demise.

Chief among the teenage talents Arkins recruits is bus conductor Andrew Strong, whose ill manners and boorish self belief is only just tolerated by the other band members because he possesses the singing voice of soul god.

Despite sexual jealousies, the mounting tension that Strong's presence generates, and a sometimes less than whole-hearted commitment to their cause, the group seems to be on the brink of success in clinching a record deal.

But after a promised guest appearance of one of Murphy's famous former jamming partners (the unseen Wilson Pickett) fails to materialise, Arkins decides, in frustration, to abandon his creation.

Only when he is stopped in the street by a chauffeur-driven limousine seeking directions, does Arkins realise how close he and the band came to hitting the big time.


Fifteen years after Bugsy Malone (1976) Alan Parker hit musical pay dirt for a second time with this modern take on the Garland-Rooney "let's put on a show" formula.

It's not hard to like a movie so completely infused with the soul classics of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Wilson Pickett.

What raises this story head and shoulders above its antecedents, though, is the absolute authenticity of both the characters' voices and the lives of crushing poverty from which these would-be stars aspire to escape.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commitments_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Malone
http://www.musicals101.com/who7c.htm#Rooney
http://www.musicals101.com/who3b.htm#Garland