The Commitments (1991)
Directed by Alan Parker
Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.
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What critics compared The Commitments to
If anything, it’s even better than The Commitments because it doesn’t go in for the slick manipulation associated with that film’s director, Alan Parker.
Sing Street has drawn plenty of comparison to Alan Parker’s 1991 feature The Commitments, about a different group of working-class Dubliners who form a band.
All it takes is one sequence that feels pulled together from everything from The Blues Brothers to The Commitments (the spirit of the latter hovering over this more innocent film like a funny, drunk uncle) and presto, Conor’s got his band.
Because of this setting, it’s been compared to Alan Parker’s The Commitments , but it’s nowhere near as gritty.
The story plays like a charming junior version of “The Commitments,” following the group as dreams come true, wishes are fulfilled and they actually become a good, unknown band.
Sing Street flaunts its influences rather proudly: There’s a touch of Rushmore, a sprinkle of Freaks and Geeks, a large dose of Almost Famous, and, inevitably, a bit of The Commitments, Alan Parker’s 1991 film about another budding Irish band.
Granted, any blue-eyed soul is immediately reminiscent of “The Commitments,” one of my favorite movies, and I settled in for what I anticipated to be a movie as delicious as that one.
Sometimes Branagh gets carried away with the sentiment, a little too on-the-nose with Van Morrison hear, a musical wake that seems more like a scene from “The Commitments.”
To be fair, Alan Parker ("The Commitments," "Evita") reportedly tried to bring the musical to the screen back in the late 1980s, but those plans fell through.
Cribbing a bit of “ Dreamgirls ” here and “ The Commitments ” there, director Wayne Blair turns this unlikely tale into something familiar, even cozy.