However, the source material is excellent it so happens that the movie is sublime, no doubt helped by the musical numbers and also by depicting the working-class enviroment of Northern Dublin and the bleak economic situation of Ireland in the late 1980s, just before rising from ashes in the Celtic Tiger era in the 1990s and beyond. The movie does expand the singular style of writing Roddy Doyle has, and is, to me, superior. And certainly, as is most befitting, there is growing tension in the band. Gradually, they get it together, get gigs, followers, recognition, even a record deal. They get instruments, a place to practise, and practise a lot they do being shit in the beginning. An outsider, Joey “The Lips” Fagan helps to lead them to be an actual band.

And manage he does to help form a soul band which consists of a mismatch of a people. They recruit another friend, Jimmy Rabbitte (Jr.) to be their manager. The band is formed by two friends Derek Scully and “Outspan” Forster. If you’ve seen the movie (really, do go see it after reading this review regardless of whether you have or have not seen it before), it does not differ that much from the novel. You see (and hear) the working-class sounds of the hardest-working band in Dublin when they practice and play gigs.

The Commitments is a fast-paced, dialogue-filled novel which consists of a lot of ONOMATOPOETIC depictions of BEATS and RIFFS and VOCALS.

Upon rewatching the movie for the nth time I decided to read the novel which lead to reading the whole of the Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle’s depiction of the working-class Rabbitte family in northern Dublin. (A few years later Trainspotting happened in my town, or actually mostly in Leith, but they did escape the police on Princes Street, the place for high end shopping and grating bagpipe music). At least, it felt like it, coming from the early 1990s Finland, after the Cold War, after the collapse of Soviet Union, Finland not yet part of the European Union, or really anything. Or perhaps due to living in Edinburgh at the time: I was practically almost next door to Dublin where The Commitments was happening. Maybe it was the story about a band – soul music never sounded so good on a silver screen. Like many others I was totally taken by the sheer force of a movie that was The Commitments back in 1991.

The commitments by roddy doyle