The Full Monty Movie Review
There were a number of feel-good date movies in 1997: The Full Monty and Good Will Hunting were among them. They were both mainly about guys, but gals didn't mind going to see them because the male stars were so cute, did cute things, et cetera. In The Full Monty, they had cute butts. The word I heard over and over again from delirious fans about this Brit indie is “original.” I'm reminded of a college dee jay who was offered five bucks an hour to do drive-time radio in a small town because the departing dee jay wanted to work full time at Safeway and when she asked about the local social life, she received a three-word reply before she turned down the job: “Unemployed married men.” That's Gaz (Robert Carlyle), Dave (Mark Addy), and Gerald (Tom Wilkinson) in Sheffield for you. Along with Guy (Hugo Speer), Horse (Paul Barber), and Lomper (Steve Huison), they pick up some extra change by doing “The Full Monty”: stripping in a nightclub. And that's the whole movie. Labor leaders lauded this film for its sympathetic portrayal of jobless workers, male and female audiences thought it was side-splitting, and I just thought, if you wouldn't want to go near Gaz-Dave-Gerald-Guy-Horse-Lomper in a town like Sheffield, why would you want to spend a whole movie with them just so you could see them without their skivvies?
1996 (R) 90m/C GB Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Steve Huison, William Snape, Paul Barber, Hugo Speer; D: Peter Cattaneo; W: Simon Beaufoy; C: John de Borman; M: Anne Dudley. Academy Awards ‘97: Best Original Musical/Comedy Score; British Academy Awards ‘97: Best Actor (Carlyle), Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Wilkinson); Screen Actors Guild Award ‘97: Cast; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘97: Best Director (Cattaneo), Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture; Australian Film Institute ‘98: Best Foreign Film; British Academy Awards ‘97: Best Director (Cattaneo), Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor (Addy), Best Supporting Actress (Sharp), Best Score; Golden Globe Awards ‘98: Best Film—Musical/Comedy; MTV Movie Awards ‘98: Best Dance Sequence (Cast); Writers Guild of America ‘97: Best Original Screenplay. VHS