 Jimmy Rabbitte, just a tick 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. Song by song, gig by gig, the Commitments start their climb to the top: Dublin gets soul. But internal strife also builds: Deco is insufferable, Joey s a Casanova, and Jimmy may lack the seasoning to hold things together. Will the Commitments slip away?