"The Ful Monty" (1997)

The Full Monty is a bawdy comedy built on a foundation of melancholy. The film centers on a story of working class men out of work who turn to stripping to make cash off of one big performance. These men are desperate, and trapped in the  formerly prosperous industrial town of Sheffield, now slowly decaying. Flighty yet lovable Gaz (Richard Carlyle) needs money to maintain custody of his son Dylan. To ensure that the crowd comes out to their act, the men decide that they will make their burlesque act the “full monty”, aka a completely nude strip. Simon Beaufoy's script scores some convenient points off of the sexual and farcical nature that this story entails, but it also seriously considers some relevant issues about what it means to be a modern man. These are not conventionally attractive men, and they know it. They worry about their appearances and body image, and they fret over no longer being bread winners. The Full Monty is consistently uproariously funny but inside its traditional narrative structure is an insightful and incisive examination of masculinity. While these men shouldn’t be sexy, especially not performing a Chippendale number, the film provides sharp characterizations that make us sympathetic to their crisis of identity and remind us that beauty is far from skin deep. To be a real man means allowing yourself to be as emotionally naked as a striptease might leave you physically naked.

Grade: B+