Review of The Full Monty (1997) by Edith N — 29 Oct 2008

There's a lot to resent about the [i]Titanic[/i] juggernaut, especially more than ten years out. As it happens, I don't resent it for the fact that [i]The Full Monty[/i] didn't win Best Picture; I was really surprised when it was nominated at all. [i]L.A. Confidential[/i] would have been a nice winner at that one, or [i]Good Will Hunting[/i] or [i]As Good As It Gets[/i]. I don't even resent it for the directing Oscar, though I think the direction here was pretty good. What's interesting is that those were the only two it came up against [i]Titanic[/i] in. [i]The Full Monty[/i] was able to receive four Oscar nominations and only be up against [i]Titanic[/i] in two of them. It was helped by the fact that there was a Comedy Score category that year--and the fact that [i]Titanic[/i] wasn't up for writing.

The steel mills have closed. Gaz (Robert Carlyle) and Dave (Mark Addy) have been put out of work, as have quite a lot of the other men in Sheffield. There aren't enough jobs to go around, and Gaz can't pay child support for his son, Nathan (William Snape). A group of Chippendales have come to town, and it's clear that they made a lot of money. So Gaz decides to get together with Dave and a few others and do a little stripping of their own so he can raise the money that his wife demands. Since none of his friends are the height of skill and style, this goes badly.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Gaz. It's true that he hasn't been paying child support, but she doesn't really need it. He's out of work, and she has a job and a boyfriend with money. She lives in a nice house, and he lives in a grotty little flat. It's true that he's supposed to be trying to find a job, but there aren't a lot of jobs an unemployed steelworker can do in a town where there isn't any steelworking anymore, and while it's true that she can find him what sounds like a grinding minimum wage job, is that really enough to pay for his bills and his child support?

But the Gaz can take care of himself. There's poor Dave, whose wife has a decent job and who has dreadful feelings on inaccuracy. There's Lomper (Steve Huison), whom they first meet while he is attempting to commit suicide--he has a job guarding the remains of the factory, but he also has a dying mother and, until well into the movie, no friends. These are the people who need sympathy--and Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), a former foreman unable to tell his wife about the plant closing, leaving her to spend money he doesn't have. Though I wonder how much her ignorance is willful--she has to have known. If she didn't know, the failing in their marriage was as much her part as his, because she wasn't taking any interest in what was going on with her husband's life.

I saw this in the theatre, all those years ago, back when I still went to movies alone now and again. The fun thing is, I recommended it to my mother, too. She and I don't reliably have the same sense of humour, you see, as she doesn't much like most British humour. But here's that little subgenre again--plucky British people in need Put On a Show or whatever, making up for their reduced circumstances. Mom likes those, I guess, even if they happen to feature naked people at the end.