Twas the writer Roddy Doyle who re-introduced the literary world to the concept of “Irish joy.” Sure’twas.

His “Barrytown Trilogy” of comic novels in the late ’80s and early ’90s — the self-published sensation “The Commitments,” “The Snapper” and “The Van” — later expanded into a pentalogy, captured the humor, the vitality and the hustle of an island that had been “poor, impoverished,” U2 lamenting “the Troubles” of Third World Ireland for far too long.

But it took the director of “Fame” to bring that noisesome frolic, a Dublin bubbling over with youthful dreams, energy and delusions, to the wider world. Alan Parker captured the old, battered city — where Doyle had set his fictional working class Barrytown neighborhood — and crowded his screen with exhuberant kids of all ages, amusingly gobsmacked adults, indulgent priests and more indulgent parents.

“The Commitments” hit viewers with a wet slap of delight in 1991, a blast of “proletarian” soul performed by Europe’s most famously downtrodden minority. The film was hardly a smash in theaters, but its video and TV afterlife were boundless. Doyle’s reputation and legend were made. A mini soul music revival — a smaller scale version of Britain’s “Northern Soul” fad or what America’s The Blue Brothers had brought forth a decade before — an explosion in Irish tourism and a 2013 stage musical spun out of it.

And here it is, a near-riotous time capsule of its day, a “real” band that of actors who could sing and play or musicians (Glen Hansard) who’d learn to act immortalized on Panavision and Dolby Stereo for all of us to marvel over decades hence.

Parker made the scruffiest “let’s get a band together” comedy of them all, a shambolic but amusing mess that loses track of its leading man after he organizes a fractious ensemble that is sure to come apart, come to ruin or come to its senses. And we get to watch it all go right or go wrong.

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is a chain-smoking 20ish hustler, pitching pirated cassettes and second-hand vhs tapes (including Parker’s “Mississippi Burning”) at street markets all over Barrytown. But when he’s alone, he fancies himself being interviewed years hence.

 “Tell us about the early days, Jimmy. How did it’all begin?”

His brainstorm is the sort of “Hail Mary” many a downtrodden schemer pulls out of his hat. He’ll form a band, one dedicated to preserving and celebrating his passion for American soul music. Jimmy then proceeds to build it around a few musical mates (Hansard, Ken McCluskey, Félim Gormley and Dick Massey), preaching his passion to any who figure “we’re too white” to pull that off that bit of cultural appropriation.

“Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the Blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the Blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the Blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud!“

One of the more hilarious audition montages in all of cinema follows, pretty much to no avail which is pretty much the point. Everybody’s into music, nobody’s that good at what Jimmy wants to hear.

But Jimmy overhears a drunk (Andrew Strong) singing along with the old LPs at a wedding. His mates lust after fair Imelda (Angeline Ball), so he recruits Bernie (Bronagh Gallagher) to sing back up, and get her friend Natalie (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and by all means, reach out to Imelda to make sure she signs on.

And then the 50ish horn player Joey “The Lips” (Johnny Murphy) motorscooters up, with big tales of his years touring with Otis and Sam and Wilson Pickett and Martha Reeves, and the band has a name — “The Commitments” — a “leader” and a cheerleader.

“Black suits,” for the men, Joey insists. Black dresses for the ladies. This is “serious” music and should be treated with respect. For the assorted unemployed pipefitters, waitresses and the like, there’s nothing for it but to dive in and and pray that this will pay off and change their lives.

“‘Destination Anywhere,'” they sing. “East or west, I don’t care.”

We travelogue (and audition montage) through a city of singers and musicians, generations inspired by Irish folk music and Phil Lynott and U2 and Elvis. That would be Jimmy’s Da (the great Colm Meaney at his most jovial), to whom Elvis isn’t just “The King.” “Elvis is GOD.”

This soul music idea? They’re onto something. Everybody knows those songs. A priest in a confessional corrects church organist now band-pianist Steve (Michael Aherne) on who wrote “Marvin Gaye’s ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.'”

“It was Percy Sledge,” my son. No, you’re both wrong. It was Calvin Wright and Andrew Wright, Father.

But the genius in Doyle’s novel and Parker’s film is finding the heart and the hilarity in things never going quite as they might.

The lead singer’s a tactless boor and egomaniacal drunk. But but…we’re on his side! Look at him belting out tunes to the bus passengers as he does his duties as conductor!

Joey “The Lips” is a womanizer, with three much MUCH younger women in his sights.

The band’s “security” (somebody HAS to make sure people pay to get in) and future drummer (Dave Finnegan) is a head-butting, hair-trigger psychotic. “But he’s OUR savage!”

They master their repertoire in a few decreasingly clumsy shows and get some press attention. If only Joey “The Lips” can talk his old bandmate and pal Wilson Pickett to drop in on them after the soul legend plays a Dublin date.

The plot may have a predictable unpredictability (think “Big Night”) and, as I said at the outset, Jimmy the leading man is a tad underdeveloped as a character. What really drives him? Where’s the money he should be spending on their sound system going? Is he really too “professional” to not be “interested” in the three girl singers?

Parker rehearsed the hell out of the cast, and once he began shooting he put most of his energy into the milieu and music, as he did in “Fame.” We get glimpses of the outside-the-band lives of the bandmates, but only glimpses.

The director still made time for little inside jokes — the “Mississippi Burning” vhs tape, the “Fame” references. A kid who rolls up to the audition on a skateboard was the lad depicted on the covers of two early U2 albums. Who knew?

And while some of the locations are still standing for pilgrims to poke around on a “Commitments” tour of Dublin, Parker brilliantly captured the city before its tourism-driven flowering.

We see a lot more of Barrytown in Stephen Frears’ “The Snapper,” an equally amusing Doyle adaptation starring Meaney and inexplicably deleted from the Internet Movie Database, and in “The Van,” a third film in the trilogy with Meaney playing differently-named, differently-focused fathers in all three.

Singer/guitarist/”ginger” Hansard would build a music career (The Frames) out of this movie, and turn up in the achingly romantic “Once” a few years back. Sax-man Gormley moved to America and played with David Letterman’s “Late Show” band for years.

Meaney’s stardom was secured by this film, and he’s become an icon of Irish cinema and The Irish in Hollywood. Gallagher has turned up in everything from “Star Wars” installments to Dickens adaptations, “Pulp Fiction” and “Sherlock Holmes.” Kennedy went on to a career that’s included “Outlander,” “Orphan Black,” “Albert Nobbs” and a “Conjuring” sequel.

And even though Parker would never again make one of those culture-shaking movies that marked his earlier career, he got a Madonna-led “Evita” on the big screen, and went Irish one last time with a well-regarded version of “Angel’s Ashes.” He died in 2020.

“Fame” may have led to a TV series and “Bugsy Malone” become a sort of landmark (kid gangster comedy) of the “nobody’ll ever remake that” variety. And “Birdy” and “Angel Heart” and even “Mississippi Burning” stand tall as his most highly-regarded films.

But “The Commitments” is one that holds up beautifully. It captures a moment when we all stopped mourning for poor “Angela’s Ashes,” Magdalene laundries (“Philomena”) Ireland, stopped dreaming of “The Quiet Man” past and started booking passage to a place that wasn’t just :Bloody Sunday” “troubled” and literary, but magical, even if there’s no such thing as Leprechauns.

Rating: R, brawling violence, smoking and profanity — lots and lots of profanity

Cast: Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Bronagh Gallagher, Angeline Ball, Johnny Murphy, Andrew Strong, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Félim Gormley, Ken McCluskey, Dave Finnegan, Dick Massey, Glen Hansard and Colm Meaney.

Credits: Directed by Alan Parker, scripted by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais and Roddy Doyle, based on Doyle’s novel. A 20th Century Fox release on Pluto, Youtube and other streamers.

Running time: 1:58