I love this film. Everything about it might seem like it is just another cliche ridden story about the rise and fall of a band, but this movie is totally different somehow. It rises above anything previous in its genre. The characters are all both interesting, and their personality flaws are used to greatly illustrate the ending of the movie. The writing was superb, and acting from a cast of mostly unknowns top notch. The musical sequences were great, and served as an introduction for me to the songs and artists that they covered. Colm Meaney was hilarious as the very skeptical father of Jimmy.

A couple of working class kids in Dublin decide to put together a band that mirrors the soul music of the USA in the 1960s. Not the Beatles, not Elvis, but do-wop and Motown. "The Irish are the blacks of Europe. Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And North Enders are the blacks of Dublin!" As they audition other young semi-hoods of varying talents, I kept thinking of what a curious diffusionary path this musical style -- with its African rhythms and call-and-response technique -- had taken: from West Africa, on slave ships to the Southern US, morphed into Christian gospel music, adapted by Detroit, and back across the ocean to Dublin.

It's not a style I groove to. The three young ladies who are backup singers are, by and large, okay, but the lead singers screeches and shouts and weeps with simulated transport. The sidemen on alto sax and trumpet are kewl, however, although one chides the other for spiralling -- "That's JAZZ." It's a movie that elicits smiles rather than laughter. The young folks are all pretty quirky and have problems dealing with unemployment and baby sitting. There's an almost constant use of a word pronounced "fook" or "fewk," which I take to be some kind of Dublin slang, possibly relating to fish and chips.

And there ARE a number of smiles in it. They watch tapes of performances by one of their heroes, James Brown, who does his emoting on stage, then falls to the floor after one particularly strenuous number, as if knee-capped. Aides rush to him, help him to his feet and guide him off stage. "Fluke!", says one of the kids, "Oi'd bust me knees!" Another assures him, "It's all part of the ACT." If you enjoyed "The Full Monte," which appeared six years later, you'll get a kick out of this. Also if you grew up during the Motown era.

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is a small time hustler selling pirated tapes and T-shirts. Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard) and Derek Scully (Ken McCluskey) ask Jimmy to manage their wedding band. Jimmy declares that they need to be a hard working Soul band. He puts an ad in the papers and it's a parade of wrong music. His Elvis loving dad (Colm Meaney) doesn't get it. Sax playing Dean Fay (Félim Gormley) is the first brought into the band. Billy Mooney (Dick Massey) is the drummer. Jimmy gets Natalie Murphy (Maria Doyle Kennedy),Imelda Quirke (Angeline Ball) and Bernie McGloughlin (Bronagh Gallagher) as the backup singers. After watching a drunken Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong) sing at the wedding, he gets him as the lead singer. Joey "The Lips" Fagan (Johnny Murphy) is the womanizing experienced trumpet player who comes up with their name "The Commitments". He hires the volatile Mickah Wallace (Dave Finnegan) as their security.

This is fun. It's great music. The cast is mostly musicians trying their hands at acting. Some of them would become quite interesting. It's based on the first of novelist Roddy Doyle's lower class Barrytown trilogy. It's heart warming and then sadly inevitable. The portrayal of the Irish lower class is one of loving profanity. The one word I would use is life. This movie is full of life. The movie could have ended with something predictable but this way it's poetry.