The Full MontySex appeal is less about physicality than verve and confidence. The Full Monty is a comedy about a group of middle-aged, unemployed men in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, who in their desperation for money become amateur strippers at the suggestion of Gary "Gaz" Schofield (Robert Carlyle). Gaz gets this idea after an off-hand remark about the profitability of Chippendale dancers combined with his need to pay child support to keep visitation rights with his son, Nathan (William Snape). But Gaz discovers that for this risky venture to be a success, he and the rest will have to give their audience something they can't get anywhere else on stage.
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Despite the premise of The Full Monty, the film is not really about male strippers, but about men who are struggling to prove to themselves and their loved ones that they have value. Blokes like Gaz and his best friend, Dave (Mark Addy), have a slovenly charm to them and are funny, but they are a couple of bums, barely putting in an effort at the local job club (unemployment office) to find work that meets their "standards". Gaz even goes so far as to recruit his son to help him steal rusty girders from his former job--one of the many abandoned factories in the "Rust Belt" of Sheffield. These are not bad men, per se, but Gaz's questionable parenting and Dave's doubts and self-loathing about his weight call attention to their imperfections. They mock a revue of touring male strippers, envious more for their gainful employment. Gaz is a schmoozer and ex-con whose reputation suggests that he knows how to run a confidence game. His ex-wife, Mandy (Emily Woof), has clearly cast off any tolerance for his impish charms and greets his excuses with a cold barrier of cynicism. If Gaz has one true merit, it is that he loves his son, even if he makes poor decisions during their visitation. Despite roping in a variety of men into a scheme to put on a strip show, Gaz is ultimately motivated by a noble goal: to maintain a presence in his son's life. Gaz and Dave are fortunate to cross paths with the security guard from their former factory, a quiet man named Lomper (Steve Huison), who Dave saves from suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Their rehearsals are awkward and embarrassing, but convey Gaz's earnestness to recruit others in his crusade. After the sobering discovery that they cannot dance, they begrudgingly "recruit" their old foreman, Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), whose dance experience (even if it is strictly ballroom) and choreography help course-correct the gang to be somewhat less of an embarrassment on stage. With the inclusion of an older, yet talented dancer--calling himself "Horse" (Paul Barber)--and the endowed Singin' in the Rain enthusiast, Guy (Hugo Speer), the sextet embarks on a laborious two-week process to transform themselves from dejected losers into local celebrities, strutting their stuff to vintage disco hits like Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" and Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff".
Although The Full Monty builds to the much vaunted stage performance--set to Tom Jones' "You Can Leave Your Hat On"--it seems incomprehensibly distant from the start of the film, because nearly all of the men in the group are plagued by doubts that threaten to derail the mission at any point. The idea of full frontal nudity in public is the ne plus ultra of efforts to overcome one's insecurities, emphasized by how these men perceive sexuality. Consider how Gaz and Dave regard women passing on the street, assigning a number value based on their attractiveness. In a later scene, when one of the men is reading a women's magazine, they comment on the appearance of the models; Dave becomes painfully aware of the double standard, observing that the way they ogle women like sex objects is how their audience will judge them. This opinion that sexuality comes from physical attractiveness before drive is a motif that parallels their feelings of betrayal and disillusionment at living in a city suffering from an economic downturn. Like its dejected protagonists, The Full Monty suggests that the whole of Sheffield has been "rejected, and that the promise of a better life lingers only as an unfulfilled afterthought. (This is underscored in the opening credits sequence--a promotional film from the Seventies, depicting Sheffield as a "city on the move".) Men and women in Sheffield are sold on the idea that a hard body is the measure of sexiness, a conceit reinforced by magazines, television, and other media removed from reality. The men and women in The Full Monty are never presented as unrealistic supermodels, but everyday people who deserve a chance to feel affection and sexual desire without being held to unreasonable standards of beauty. Breaking out of this social conditioning is the real hurdle for the men in the film to overcome; in their mutual struggle, they forge a sincere friendship with one another. As the saying goes, it isn't what you've got but how you use it that counts.
Recommended for: Fans of a charming comedy that conveys a down-to-earth message about beauty and sex appeal that is universal. The humor in The Full Monty comes from the unlikeliness that men who do not look like models would become strippers, but the heart of the film is in their struggle to accept that this does not make them any less of men.
Although The Full Monty builds to the much vaunted stage performance--set to Tom Jones' "You Can Leave Your Hat On"--it seems incomprehensibly distant from the start of the film, because nearly all of the men in the group are plagued by doubts that threaten to derail the mission at any point. The idea of full frontal nudity in public is the ne plus ultra of efforts to overcome one's insecurities, emphasized by how these men perceive sexuality. Consider how Gaz and Dave regard women passing on the street, assigning a number value based on their attractiveness. In a later scene, when one of the men is reading a women's magazine, they comment on the appearance of the models; Dave becomes painfully aware of the double standard, observing that the way they ogle women like sex objects is how their audience will judge them. This opinion that sexuality comes from physical attractiveness before drive is a motif that parallels their feelings of betrayal and disillusionment at living in a city suffering from an economic downturn. Like its dejected protagonists, The Full Monty suggests that the whole of Sheffield has been "rejected, and that the promise of a better life lingers only as an unfulfilled afterthought. (This is underscored in the opening credits sequence--a promotional film from the Seventies, depicting Sheffield as a "city on the move".) Men and women in Sheffield are sold on the idea that a hard body is the measure of sexiness, a conceit reinforced by magazines, television, and other media removed from reality. The men and women in The Full Monty are never presented as unrealistic supermodels, but everyday people who deserve a chance to feel affection and sexual desire without being held to unreasonable standards of beauty. Breaking out of this social conditioning is the real hurdle for the men in the film to overcome; in their mutual struggle, they forge a sincere friendship with one another. As the saying goes, it isn't what you've got but how you use it that counts.
Recommended for: Fans of a charming comedy that conveys a down-to-earth message about beauty and sex appeal that is universal. The humor in The Full Monty comes from the unlikeliness that men who do not look like models would become strippers, but the heart of the film is in their struggle to accept that this does not make them any less of men.