Angela's Ashes by Stephen Farber Occasionally, a biography succeeds in recounting the travails not of high-profile figures, but ordinary people. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's memoir of his childhood in Ireland, is a prime example of this alternative brand of nonfiction. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and has remained on the best-seller list for years. After seeing the film version directed by Alan Parker, you may wonder why it caused such a stir. The movie is well crafted and touching, but it doesn't exactly break new ground. After all, we've seen many stories of family dynamics in dire poverty. It would require the kind of poetic vision Fellini brought to Amarcord to freshen the familiar scenes of Catholic school tortures or adolescent sexual hijinks. In addition, the characters rendered here are simply too ordinary to be compelling. The father, played by Robert Carlyle, is a stock Irish drunk, and the mother, played by Emily Watson, is a typical long-suffering drudge. What's missing is a novelist's insight into character. I suppose an amazing film could be made about a drab, dirt-poor cast of characters, but this isn't it. On the whole, true stories with more startling contours are far more likely to grab the imagination. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.

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