The Commitments was released 25 years ago and to celebrate the cult release, a special edition DVD and Blu-ray is now being released.
Jimmy Rabbitte is a Dubliner who's always had a dream to start a band and make it big. Deciding to act on his dreams, Jimmy puts out an ad for musicians in the area looking to share in his idea. After many unsuccessful auditions, Jimmy is tired out for watching terrible wannabe musicians and decides that he's going to start a band with his friends, whilst he acts as their manager.
He recruits a number of people, Deco Cuffe who has the perfect voice to front a soul band; Outspan Foster to play guitar; Steven Clifford to play the piano; Dean Fay to play the saxophone; bassist Derek Scully, drummer Billy Mooney, and three backup singers who are all girls: Bernie McGloughlin, Natalie Murphy and Imelda Quirke. The lineup is finally complete when they meet Joey 'The Lips' Fagan who might be much older than the other guys in the band but he plays the trumpet and has a years of experience playing with some of the people Jimmy most looks up to.
Now his band is assembled, all Jimmy has to do is make them famous. The band are soon put into rehearsals and they learn a number of Soul standards including Try A Little Tenderness, Mutang Sally and In The Midnight Hour. Work about the band spreads around town and now Jimmy must secure his newly named band, The Commitments, a gig. Teething problems start to appear and Jimmy soon learns that there's far more to managing a band than he first thought and he must find any way possible to stop his band from breaking up.
Starring: Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle , Andrew Strong, Dave Finnegan, Bronagh Gallagher, Félim Gormley, Glen Hansard, Dick Massey, Johnny Murphy, Kenneth McCluskey, Colm Meaney, Andrea Corr