Rating: 
Summary: An Echo of the Book, but Still an Excellent Movie
Review: I try to never get my hopes up when I see a movie based on a book I have read, espcially a book I like. Angela's Ashes was an intense reading experience. The movie captured most of the hopelessness, the sadness, and the innocence. I say most, but not all. A movie can only reflect part of the feelings and intensity of a book because it only has two hours in which to capture that book's tone and plot.If you love the book, you'll like the movie. Watch the movie then read the book all over again.
Rating: 
Summary: Serious yet funny, too.
Review: I'm not into the Irish thing, but this movie intrigued me. It deals with a completely serious topic -- the struggles of a desperately poor Irish family -- yet humor is injected into the McCourt family's dire circumstances. The Uncle Pat character was hilarious! I liked the way the story seamlessly transitioned from one era of young Frank's life to the other: In the blink of an eye, I saw a new and older Frank. It was very nicely done. The only drawback was the constant vomiting. Try not to watch this movie while eating! I think every major character had a go at it. By far the most hilarious vomiting scene occured when Frank vomited after receiving Holy Communion, causing his grandmother to complain, "I've got God in me back yard!"
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing like the book
Review: This movie was a good idea, but poorly done. It feels like watching a drawn-out chiche. The book was fantastic; dark and light at the same time, eerie and beautiful... the movie just doesn't do the book justice. I was highly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Ashes of me life
Review: Angela's Ashes is the life of Little Frank Mccourt,
living in a dreadful boarding room, with his
family. His mother is trying desperately to hang
on to what little faith she has. Margaret "Frank's
Sister," and Eugene and Oliver "Frank's Brothers"
died at a young age, and frank is finding out why
the lord has taken them from them. The father
is portrayed as a drunk and a loser. Which he is.
How ever he does love the family, but think he can't
support them in anyway, so he drinks the money,
instead of sharing it with the family. Frank grows
up, and gets wiser in the end. He found happiness
when he goes to america. The same place that he
started, is the same place he ends up. America.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievely Great
Review: When this movie was first released, I was skeptical about how a fabulous book such as ANGELA'S ASHES could be made into a movie. But my curiosity got the better of me and I found myself watching the words I read come to life on the screen.
The story is about Frank McCourt, a young boy growing up in poverty in Ireland. The story tells of Frank's life starting at around the age of six or seven and continues until he is 16. It deals with many issues that faced people in the same situation as the McCourts- a fight between religions, hunger, as I mentioned before, poverty, etc. It also focuses on the love of family.
Angela's Ashes is a beautiful video that teaches that a mother's love is one of the most important things in the world. I love this movie. The screenplay is delighful and well acted, with lovable characters and even a few that you may find yourself hating. Rent this movie! It's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Growing up dirt poor, but full of life, in Ireland.
Review: My wife and I rented the video of, Angela's Ashes. I had read the book and it's sequel, 'Tis, both by Frank McCourt. It's an autobiography, about growing up in the direst poverty in Brooklyn and Ireland. Although the book showed the bleakest of poverty, I thought it was wildly funny on the whole. The movie focused more on the sad aspects alone. The frequent black and white footage of the dark and gloomy rain soaked lanes of Irish cities cast a black mood over me. Living conditions were one step better than living in a dumpster. I can see where, to a naïve viewer unfamiliar with the ways things were, the conditions might seem funny at first. They are so extreme; one couldn't possibly believe that people actually lived like that. It must be a joke! But millions of Irish grew up just like that and many died under the conditions, without ever growing up. The institutional church and all authority come out looking pretty bad. There are the priests and brothers who slam doors in their faces when they go to them for help. When Frank gets a job delivering telegrams, he finds out that at the houses of the Religious they don't give tips to poor boys that deliver telegrams.
There's an overfed priest handing out leftover food from the rectory table to destitute women at the back door. Going before the government Dole board and the St. Vincent DePaul Society is a humiliating, dehumanizing experience. The school-teachers are mostly hostile and domineering. Corporal punishment is the norm. Priests rain down fire and brimstone from the pulpits. They threaten eternal damnation to the fires of hell for sins of sexual impurity, to boys who have had multiple brothers and sisters die of hunger and disease and who are so hungry they lick the grease off newspapers used to wrap food. Strangely, despite the harshness of the church, Frank prays, especially to Saint Francis of Assisi. A humane Franciscan priest hears his badly needed confession and gives him absolution. The role of Frank's father was played perfectly. He appears exactly as he does in the book. The author and director made a fair attempt to paint a three dimensional character. I feel like I understood him, from the outside, or from a distance as much as one can understand a man like that. As Frank says, he was like three different people. One was the man who told great children's stories and the man so proud to have fought with the IRA for Ireland and challenged his toddler sons to pledge to die for Ireland. There was the man who looked for work and could never find any. And then there was the man who went out and spent all his money on booze while his children starved, some to death. Others died to disease, aggravated by malnutrition. As much as the viewer may hate or despise the father, the bonds between father and son ultimately hold. At one point Frank's father goes to England for a good paying factory job. Months go by; he doesn't send a penny home. He spends it all in the pubs of England. He shows up in the lane on Christmas Eve. He doesn't have a penny for the family. He has a box of candy with him, one piece for each kid, for Christmas day. On Christmas day, the father suddenly leaves to return to England. As his father is walking out through the alleyways, Frank tries to secretly follow him. Frank says to himself, "If I was in America, I could say I love you dad, I love you, but I was in Limerick and in Limerick they'd laugh at you if you said that. You're only allowed to say you love God and babies and horses that win; otherwise, they'd think you're soft in the head.
Rating: 
Summary: Morbidly Depressing
Review: This movie just drags. The struggle between the characters and their desires is noble and just, but the movie is just morbidly depressing. Is this entertianing? I can't see how.
Rating: 
Summary: A quality film, but relentlessly downbeat
Review: There's definitely a place and a purpose for realistic films. But this one to me is too one sided, and while one can admire the acting and the photography, I had a feeling of wallowing in depression. I understand that the book is definitely a major work of literature. And the movie is instructive in it's portrayal of poverty. We need to realize and be aware of these things. But we also need the feeling of a human spirit that is capable of surviving and of finding joy in life. One may well be better off to read the book first to get all that the author intended. After reading the book, decide whether or not you want to see the movie, bearing in mind that many were disappointed by it.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I had high expectations for this film. Too high, may have been the case. As the AMAZON review says, this film is far from an artistic disappointment. But it does not do what it should have. During the "making of" on the DVD, director-screenwriter Alan Parker says that he had trouble making the film flow, and had to resort to using a narrarator to get it to work. This is the major flaw. Approximately 90% of the film seems to be covered by narraration, and about 1/3d of the way in you start to realize that there is narraration and that realization ruins it. The narraration squashes the fine work being done by Emily Watson and the extraordinary work being done by Robert Carlyle. Mr. Carlyle's ability to keep the elder Mr. McCourt from becoming a complete monster is certainly a high point in this film. Unfortunately the overly intrusive narraration blocks the audience from getting as close to the characters as it wants. By employing the use of a narrarator, Mr. Parker puts an unnecessary and ultimately impenetrable barrier between the characters and the audience and in the end, this stunts the film.
Rating:
Summary: Not bittersweet just bitter
Review: The original book had humour and pathos, good comedy is often tragic don't you think?
This movie lacked humour and was just plain dreary. It also moved at such a pace that the characters remained two dimensional caricatures rather than envoking any sympathy in the audience. Perhaps it would have been better to allude to some of the events in the book and spend more time on specific key events.
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