| Movies! |
Our friends across the pond possess a rich comedic tradition. Monty Python, Are You Being Served?, Fawlty Towers and other brilliant satires have emerged from England during times of great social change.
In 1997, an independent comedy called The Full Monty was released theatrically and became one of the highest grossing films in the history of the UK. It continues to find an audience more than fifteen years later because the issues of unemployment, sexual repression, censorship and body image are still being dealt with today in many cultures around the globe.
The Full Monty is about a depressed factory town called Sheffield and its unemployed steel workers. When two of these blokes stumble into a Chippendales male strip show for women, one of them gets a idea to make some easy quid: they will put on their own novelty strip show. The premise is already funny, but you must be asking one obvious question: How can these “average” Joes compete with the chiseled looks of the Chippendales dancers?
Here’s where the title of the film comes in. The Full Monty is a British-ism for “going all the way”. Gaz (Robert Carlyle), his mate Dave (Mark Addy), and his crew are going to bring the ladies in by mere exploitation and marketing. Where the Chippendales leave on the g-strings, the steel workers intend to strip down to their birthday gear. The rest of the film becomes a countdown to showtime. Will the fear of embarrassment outweigh the need to make some money to support their families?
One member of this crew who is especially skeptical is Gerald, played by Tom Wilkinson. He is a more refined man who lives with his wife in a picturesque suburban home…until Gaz and Dave come knocking. Some will recognize Wilkinson from his role in Batman Begins as the mob boss Falcone or from a handful of other more dramatic roles. However, The Full Monty allows him to perform as a believable comedic straight man trying to keep up appearances.
The British trope of a sexually repressed middle-class male is not lost on the filmmakers; it is employed very effectively here. Robert Carlyle is also playing a 180 from the usual tough character he is known for. Everyone will remember him as the volatile mustached Begbie from Trainspotting. In The Full Monty, he is a loving father and the glue that holds a very ludicrous movie together. He doesn’t want to put on a blue-collar strip show to exploit his friends for monetary gain, he needs the child support money to salvage a relationship with his young son.
Mark Addy, from A Knight’s Tale and the cult favorite American sitcom Still Standing – plays Gaz’s overweight friend, Dave. His reservations about performing in a live strip show stem from his size. While this is a bit of a cliche, the dramatic scenes with his wife make up for it: he wants nothing more than to be a good provider and a loving husband.
Every one of these blokes have self-consciousness issues to overcome. It is their spirit and dedication to a group cause that makes them very likeable characters. Even though this Full Monty is about England, the indie hit continues to have a long shelf life because the issue of mass unemployment is relevant to any social structure in the world. Whether it is the struggles of a hardscrabble Dickens character or the Financial Meltdown of 2007- 2008, most people can relate to the desperation that comes from being out of work. Leave it to the UK to make a very poignant satire about a very universal theme.
Filmmakers and artists have a way of taking a social ill and reminding us that if we look at it from another angle, there is always a way to make things better. Sometimes, we just need to strip away the status quo in order to move forward.
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