The Full Monty
(British, 1997)
Seen on 10 September 1997 for $8/75 at the SONY 19th Street
In British slang, "the full monty" means to be completely naked. While *The Full Monty* is about a sextet of out-of-work blokes who decide to put on a strip-tease act, a lot more than their bodies are laid bare. "Sheffield, a city on the move!" cries a propaganda film of the 1950s, declaring a boom for Sheffield and all of Britain. This is a stark contrast to the present, where steel plants that once helped produced the flatware on your dining table lay idle and rusting. The streets are not bustling; Sheffield often looks like a ghost town. The ghosts in this case are the flesh-and-blood men who are out of work, on the dole, with time on their hands. The few jobs that are available are low-paying security guard j obs.
Robert Carlyle plays Gaz, a former steel worker who cannot afford to do much with his son Nathan (William Snape). Along with his friend Dave (Mark Addy), they meander around town like a pair of middle-aged teenagers.
A brief bit of eavesdropping in the mens room of a strip club catering to ladies for the evening gives Gaz an idea--he should form a strip troupe and raise money far quicker than the few jobs available to him. Then he would have money for child support, a nd joint custody.
What ensues is not unlike *The Seven Samurai*, with a highly entertaining and comic story of how the other members of the troupe are found and incorporated. First there is the suicidal Lomper (Steve Huison), followed by the middle manager cum dance instru ctor Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), pentagenarian Horse, who knows how to move, and Guy, who wants to dance like Gene Kelly but winds up flat on his back everytime he tries to walk up a wall. Luckily, Guy is extremely well endowed, which guarantees his entry to the troupe.
As is often the case with movies set in Great Britain, there is a lot of social commentary going on that often passes us by. Gerald lives a middle-class lifestyle (gnomes all over the garden) and has a house full on unnecessary luxuries. Lomper lives in a Victorian attached house with his aged mother. Dave has sexual troubles with his wife, likely stemming from not having meaningful work. Many of these men had once been part of a great nation, and empire, and now, they haunt their old places and the high street has been supplanted by superstores and megamalls.
Men often define themselves by their work and their relative success in work defines their overall "worthiness." This is clear in The Full Monty. What makes it a winning movie is that the actors are able to pull off the dual roles of physical comedy and e motional depth. That is certainly no easy task, but the actors all pull it off. It's hard to find a favorite performance because they all do so well.
Some scenes to watch for: Dave and Gaz meet the Lomper; Gerald's interview; the six men waiting in line for the dole and spontaneously jiggling to the strains of Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff." The soundtrack is a lot of fun, too.
As with many British movies, you often wish subtitles were included. Luckily, the Full Monty website (via Fox Searchlight pictures) has a little phrasebook included.
---------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1997, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021, sethbook@panix.com.
Other movie reviews with graphics can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews