The Full Monty (1997)
Directed by Peter Cattaneo
Sheffield, England. Gaz, a jobless steelworker in need of quick cash persuades his mates to bare it all in a one-night-only strip show.
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8 films that influenced The Full Monty
What critics say influenced The Full Monty
“The Full Monty” belongs in the recent tradition of bittersweet films from Britain that depict working- class life, movies like “ The Snapper ” and “ The Van ,” based on Roddy Doyle books; “ Raining Stones ,” about an unemployed man desperate to buy his daughter's communion dress, and the recent “ Brassed Off ,” which was also about an industry shutting down and leaving its community stranded.
Like the wonderful "Brassed Off" about a downtrodden British mining town, "The Full Monty" takes the viewer to a once bustling manufacturing town where the forges and factories have shut down, leaving the workers on the dole.
Brassed Off, 1997, Mark Herman, for another look at unemployment in post-Thatcher industrial Britain.
Exploring the same English working-class woes as "Brassed Off" and "The Van," but with a much more daffy sense of humor, "The Full Monty" is the kind of movie you can't help but love.
Unlike Mark Herman's 1996 "Brassed Off" (a similarly themed comedy about the decline of British industry and its impact on ordinary lives) "The Full Monty" never lets its angry subtext stifle the laughs.
But mostly the film cuts its pathos with humor, whether it's portraying the men gyrating to Donna Summer in a shuffling welfare line or critiquing Jennifer Beals's welding abilities in Flashdance.
With no chewy, ambitious themes, no movie-star charisma or auteur flourishes, "The Full Monty" is the kind of movie that critics underestimate and audiences love -- or at least that crucial segment of the film-going public who occasionally select some little film ("Il Postino," "Strictly Ballroom," "Shine") to elevate to the status of surprise hit.
“The Full Monty” belongs in the recent tradition of bittersweet films from Britain that depict working- class life, movies like “ The Snapper ” and “ The Van ,” based on Roddy Doyle books; “ Raining Stones ,” about an unemployed man desperate to buy his daughter's communion dress, and the recent “ Brassed Off ,” which was also about an industry shutting down and leaving its community stranded.
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Tom Wilkinson ( Sense and Sensibility ) has the "stuck up bastard with a good heart" role down pat.
“The Full Monty” belongs in the recent tradition of bittersweet films from Britain that depict working- class life, movies like “ The Snapper ” and “ The Van ,” based on Roddy Doyle books; “ Raining Stones ,” about an unemployed man desperate to buy his daughter's communion dress, and the recent “ Brassed Off ,” which was also about an industry shutting down and leaving its community stranded.
With Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle (Priest, The Full Monty), Kelly Macdonald, and Shirley Henderson.
The short-tempered Begbie, played by Robert Carlyle of Priest (and later The Full Monty ), comes increasingly into focus as the film wears on, and that itself seems like a mistake; the character is too peripheral and broad in the film's beginning to involve us much in his climactic lashings out, even when their implications for Renton are dire and immediate.
“The Full Monty” belongs in the recent tradition of bittersweet films from Britain that depict working- class life, movies like “ The Snapper ” and “ The Van ,” based on Roddy Doyle books; “ Raining Stones ,” about an unemployed man desperate to buy his daughter's communion dress, and the recent “ Brassed Off ,” which was also about an industry shutting down and leaving its community stranded.