The Full Monty (1997)
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The Full Monty Movie Review
The Full Monty is a 1997 British comedy film starring Robert Carlyle and Tom Wilkinson. It is a solid, but overrated film.
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“He’s fat, you’re thin, and you’re both fucking ugly“
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The film is about a group of friends in England who start a male striptease act to gain money. Now, this was obviously a very bold and interesting idea for a film back in 1997, but for now unfortunately it isn’t as we have ‘Magic Mike’ now and that movie goes much further with this story. This is still a better film, but not by much.
That is because it lost its edge by this time and the film really isn’t all that sophisticated as critics proclaimed it is. It actually deals with a lot of themes such as obesity, homosexuality, unemployment and mostly body image and fathers’ rights. But because you have just ninety minutes, most of these themes are left unexplored and barely touched upon.
The Full Monty is still entertaining and definitely a lot of fun, but not as well crafted and somehow rushed. The characters are solid, but there are too much of them in my opinion and thus some are left entirely unexplored such as Guy and Lomper who are forgettable, underutilized and their eventual romance was barely hinted upon.
I honestly had a big problem with the film’s subplot with Nathan. Kids should not watch their father naked and doing striptease and that was just wrong to me. I got why they did it, but still they could have maybe gone with a different route.
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But Gaz is a relatable character and especially his friend Dave with his obesity problem. Their friendship is great and the actors did a great job, especially Robert Carlyle and it was so weird seeing him so young here.
The Full Monty has a couple of really great scenes and it really benefits from being a British film in location and dialect, but it is never really hilarious and it thus fails as a comedy. The score is pretty solid and the use of its famous songs is excellent. The film is engaging, pleasing and sometimes even charming. But it just did not deserve all of those Oscar nominations and is frankly never great.
The Full Monty has a couple of excellent performances, a good use of its soundtrack, many fun scenes and it deals with some interesting themes, but it doesn’t really explore all of those themes, some characters are underutilized, some plot elements were troublesome and the film is overall just solid and never as great as critics say it is as it is very flawed and it lost its edge after all this time.
