Review of The Full Monty (1997) by Jacob D — 06 Jun 2010

This film is absolutely hilarious and can be watched over and over again. This film is amongst the best British films I've seen and just shows how great we are at comedy.

The plot revolves around a group of working class men who are out of work so seeing the success of male strippers they form a group, decide to become strippers and for one night only to do the Full Monty(taking off ALL their clothes).

They all face tough problems in their lives and could do with the money. Gaz the self appointed leader needs to pay child-support so he can see his son, Dave struggles with self esteem problems, Gerald is unemployed but continues to pretend he is so his wife doesn't find out...

After going through many difficulty's and personal problems the act is put on and they perform admirably before a large crowd and make themselves a few thousand pounds.

The acting in this was top notch all around, Robert Carlyle was amazing as Gaz and so was Tom Wilkinson as Gerald.

The characters were extremely well developed and just felt so real.

The problems they all go through are very relevant to modern society, such as unemployment, divorce and having your child taken away from you.

The soundtrack was excellent(especially the Hot Chocolate track).

The screenplay was very good, the dialogues never felt forced and they were certainly never boring, they were emotional without being cheesy and funny without being embarrassing .

The direction was great, it really captured the bleakness and hopelessness of Sheffield and it's population at that time.

The plot is fairly simple and very easy to follow. It starts with a short introduction, they then get their group together and the rest of the film is focused on the time between the forming of the group and the performance.

This film features some scenes of "pure comedic gold" in my opinion such as the opening scene when they are stuck on a car roof in the middle of a river, the scene when they are all in a queue when the music comes on they all start dancing and the first serious rehearsal when they get arrested.

Highly recommended to fans of all things British, of Robert Carlyle( who gives yet another excellent performance) or if you just want to have a laugh(I can guarantee you will).

Just writing this review makes me want to go and watch it again, you definitely have to see this film and when you've finished watching it you'll want to rewatch all over again.

I think I should mention the fact that some of the accents are quite strong, not as strong as in real life but if you're not familiar at all with various English accents you might have trouble understanding some scenes.

Cinematography 9/10.

Acting 10/10.

Soundtrack 10/10.

Plot 9/10.

Screenplay 9/10.