Rating: 
Summary: Very good movie...bad casting decisions.
Review: I shall not repeat the other reviewers in writing paragraphs about how well the movie was made. One problem though; nearly none of the main actresses or actors is Irish. This makes the accents very silly and inaccurate, especially for the time period in which it is set. Their skills in portraying the characters were very well done, however, so it is still worth watching. However, as a Gaelic speaker in addition to being a Celtic History major, it is a bit annoying in the areas I just specified.
Rating: 
Summary: Soon to be classic!
Review: This is, in my opinion, the best movie ever. It is incredible honest and true to the original book. After seeing the movie, I ran out to get the book and was suprised to see how the movie followed the book so well! It's a must for all! The extra features on the DVD are wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The book was engrossing. Too bad the film left so much out. Alan Parker's cinematic sense shines through, but I was never convinced of the poverty or the desperation elicited in the book. I never saw the McCourts in rags or visibly starving. The scene of the "disappearing wall" was missing as was any other subtle humor. The father had no discernable personality. This film could have been SO MUCH BETTER!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent adaptation
Review: This movie is, how should I say it, pretty good. Very accurate screening, accurate acting, and very well made. I don't know some people degrade the movie for a few historical errors, but that hardly matters in the movie. All that it reminds me of a best-selling book successfully adapted into a feature-length movie.It's surprising how Maltin and Ebert rated this movie at **1/2 stars, JUST because "it was too dark, lacking warmth and humor." It has plenty of warmth and some humor and a bit dark, but a fine adaptation of McCourt's autobiography, I give it ***1/2 stars, or ***** stars for this review. Heck, even the author himself said it was "a wonderful adaptation of my book." Well, it goes to show how some critics are WRONG, and this movie should have a rightful Oscar nod. Rated R for language and nudity.
Rating: 
Summary: A good adaptation
Review: Angela's Ashes is a lengthy adaptation of the Frank McCourt novel. Though it's longand boring at times, it's still meaningful in a special way. Meaningful because it deals with people living in poverty, and a lot of people live that way. This is a good movie in some ways, and a cool DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Frankie's lunar eclipse at the end of Angela's ashes
Review: In this otherwise excellent film from artistic and social perspectives came to my attention a open inconsistency in the last minutes of this extraordinarily crafted work: the sequence of observing a lunar eclipse in the streets of Limerick has a duration of aproximately 60 seconds with the continuity given by the voices of the people during the phenomenon. I wonder if Parker couldn't show us a insight of the real duration of this natural happening (average duration of 60 minutes) using traditional narrative cinematographic techniques for shortening this duration to the interval demanded by the screenplay (likely about one minute). Was this unnatural slip made intentionally? That would mean a strange unnaturally short "period of darkness(poverty?)" for Frankie before returning him to America or there were a real not accounted mistake in the screenplay demmanding a sequence of 60 seconds instead of 60 minutes?
Rating:
Summary: Dark but Redemptive
Review: All of the reviews that I've read of Angela's Ashes use words such as "depressing","somber" and "cold".I won't say that there are no merits in these descriptions but I do feel that at least as much notice should be given to the overall warmth of the movie. Despite a severely alcoholic father and an uneducated, mostly passive, and sick in spirit mother, and a seemingly bitter childhood,Frank McCourt manages to tell his story with tenderness and love for his people. The photography is excellent, managing to be beautiful even though the sets speak largly of decay. The dialog seems somewhat flattened and "americanized" compared to the book, but is still quite colorfull and wonderfully close to real. Robert Carlyle portrays McCourts father, a terminally unemployed alcoholic, with some tenderness for the character and I think captures the mirror image of McCourts' understandingly ambivalent memories of his father. At first Emily Watson's performance seemed to me to exibit a coldness that I saw as without motivation and distant, but as I began to truly understand the implications of the story I have come to think that an accurate rendition of McCourt's mother. Director Alan Parker handles this film in a straight forward manner.It is dark without being evil, it is touching without subjecting the audience to schmaltzy devices designed to influence emotion. As for redemption, the fact that McCourt could write his story with so much compassion, humor,and dignity, and have it accepted with so much goodwill around the world, seems like a victory to me.
Rating:
Summary: Angela's Ashes
Review: McCourt set out to make a miserable movie about a miserable place in a miserable time. He wanted to succeed in painting a picture so drab and weary that you're likely to leave the theater feeling guilty that you have no holes in your pockets and wonder bread in the cubbard. He does succeed, he's made a fine picture, but he's made it for himself and not us. It's about a grown up boy from Limerick coming to terms with the past, it's really him behind the camera releasing the pain as if it were an Exodus from Egypt. Angela's Ashes is therapy for him. It's angry, and I think that's fine, because he just about convinces us that he has the right to make this kind of movie even if we don't. It goes to supersede the kind of realism that the Italians were talking about. Fellini wrote and directed about childhood poverty, but not this kind of poverty, he wanted us to identify with the universal human spirit whereas McCourt doesn't think we have the right to. He says that even if you're poor in America you're not this poor, and if you are you can still tell your father you love him without being laughed at. There are some emotional payoffs in the movie: his aunt's unexpected kindness, his first sexual experience, his luck in finding passage to America. But the movie isn't about those scenes, the script and direction don't treat them with the same kind of meticulous care. They dance on the brink of being superfluous, they make the film uneven; those scenes don't belong in the kind of movie he really needed to make. The contrast isn't strong enough, but it's a good film, and I hope you see it, just like I hope McCourt is able to find some closure. After all, that's who you're really rooting for, the man who wrote the book, the voice over that assume his identity; You're just not too sure about the characters on the screen. Receiving a film is a completely subjective. It's very possible you may not respond to this kind of movie, you may think it too pretentious and too angry, or you may very well find it an enlightening experience. It's worth discovering for yourself, isn't it?
Rating:
Summary: GOOD ADAPTATION...GREAT ACTING
Review: Many of the previous negative reviews unfairly compare the book to the film. I approached this adaptation of a very well-known book AS A FILM, not a literal or deeper realization of a work of art that, of course, could not measure up to the artist's words. I have not read the book but having seen this movie, I will. There are too many other artists involved in this production to be singularly true to Mr. McCourt's vision of his past but I think they may have gotten much of it right and as a film on it's own, it is well written, excellently acted and does stand on its own as a thoughtful, if mournful, work of art.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite as pleasing as the book but close enough
Review: The adaptation of this wonderful book into a movie almost worked perfectly except that if you had read the book than you really didn't need to see the movie. On the other hand in case you missed the book than I suggest watching the movie with an open heart. Like many of the other reviewers of this DVD I was a bit disapointed after seeing the adaptation at first but than started to enjoy the beautiful picture the movies paints of Ireland. In the end I suggest buying the movie and watching it every few years to remember the magic that is the book.
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