In adapting Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's justly acclaimed memoir of an Irish childhood spent poor, hungry, and miserable, director Alan Parker might have exhausted Ireland's supply of dry ice. Steam, fog, and general murk appear everywhere, so much so that a few moments seem like outtakes from the director's Pink Floyd The Wall. Still, Angela's Ashes is otherwise relatively restrained by Parker's standards, and in its best moments, it does right by McCourt's book. Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson, both always worth watching, star as McCourt's parents, the former a troubled alcoholic from Ulster, the latter his long-suffering wife. But, as in the book, this is very much their son's story, and what served as McCourt's greatest strength—his ability to speak convincingly from the perspective of his own childhood—turns into the film's greatest weakness. Except for the occasional awkwardly implemented voiceover, Parker loses the narrative voice that made McCourt's memoir so unforgettable, leaving the potentially more interesting story of Carlyle and Watson's marriage in the background. Parker gains, however, the ability to portray abject poverty in all its unrelenting squalor, from flea-ridden secondhand mattresses to a charity Christmas dinner consisting of a sheep's head, eyes intact. In this, Parker doesn't compromise: The first 40 minutes feature three dead babies, while the first two of the three young actors playing McCourt seem to have been chosen for their inability to smile. Effectively acted and evocatively shot, there still seems to be something missing from Parker's film, even if it's seldom less than compelling. Maybe it's that, as with its source, it's at heart a fairly familiar coming-of-age tale. Without McCourt's prose coating it, this limitation becomes more obvious than ever, but it's a familiar story well told.