NoFace for Film

Title: The Full Monty - Fully Exposed Edition
Year: 1997
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber
Rated: R

NoFace for Film rating: 5 out of 7

It’s 1972, and the town of Sheffield, England is booming, thanks to the highly successful steel industry. A voiceover cheerily explains the many uses of steel, from making cutlery to steel girders, and describes the happy, busy workers of the town.

Flash forward to 1997. Sheffield’s steel factories have been shut down, and its former employees struggle to find new jobs. Gaz (Carlyle) and his best friend Dave (Addy) are so desperate for money that you find them at the start of the film trying to abscond with a steel beam from their old mill so they could sell it. Their plan fails miserably, and the two head home empty-handed. Along the way they notice a long line of women in front of a club advertising a men’s strip show. Gaz and Dave laugh at this, stating that “real men” such as themselves would never be caught dead stripping. However, when Gaz’s ex-wife and new husband threaten to obtain full custody of his son Nathan (Snape), Gaz realizes that he’ll do anything to keep Nathan, even if it means swallowing his male pride.

Although The Full Monty is often touted as a comedy, it’s not just one funny scene after another. There are many serious themes, many of which deal with the roles of men in modern society. When the men of Scheffield lost their jobs, many became depressed, felt emasculated, and unsure of themselves. While Gaz feels like a failure in front of his son, Dave has distanced himself from his wife, and is increasingly concerned with his appearance. Their ex-foreman Gerald (Wilkinson) hasn’t told his wife that he’s been unemployed for the last six months. Lomper (Huison), an ex-security guard at the mill, is found by Gaz and Dave attempting suicide. As Gaz recruits these men and a few others for his plan, all find that they have nothing left to lose…except their clothes.

That being said, it’s a funny movie. The Full Monty isn’t side splitting, Will Farrell movie funny, but there are some good moments. Since much of the dialogue is peppered with heavy British slang that’s unfamiliar to Americans, most of the humor is visual rather than verbal. For example, there’s the classic “cue” scene which features our band of would-be strippers subtly rehearsing their dance steps while waiting in line for their unemployment checks. Then of course, there’s just the whole idea of a group of middle-aged, out of shape men stripping.

The cast was great, especially Wilkinson and Addy, who wonderfully balanced drama and comedy in their roles as Gerald and Dave. While these two characters had many funny scenes, actually they’re two of the more serious roles, as they dealt with their wives and unemployment in their own way. Carlyle was good as Gaz, but I didn’t feel that his character had as much depth as the other two leads. Yes, he had problems with his ex-wife and son, but they seemed to be quickly resolved, as opposed to that of Gerald and Dave, whose issues haunted them throughout the entire film.

I saw The Full Monty when it first came out on DVD many years ago, so imagine my curiosity when I had heard about this 2-disk DVD. Looking at the description from Amazon, it appears that the original DVD was very bare bones and had no extra features except for language choices. The 2-disk DVD on the other hand, is chock-full of features, some of which are very cool, but others are kind of boring. Disk 1 contains the film itself along with stuff like audio commentary, cast interviews, TV ads, and deleted footage. The deleted footage section is a little different. Rather than showing an entire scene that was cut from the film like in most DVDs, most of the deleted footage features all the different camera angles filmed for one scene, before they were spliced together. It’s cool to see two examples of this, but it gets old quickly.

Disk 2 contains several featurettes on the making of the film. My favorite part is the “Translating English to English” featurette where a scholar explains some of the slang used in the film and how it was translated for American audiences. Indeed, I must admit that when I first watched The Full Monty, I didn’t understand half of what anyone said. In fact, I watched this particular DVD with subtitles, which interestingly enough was the default setting. Coincidence? I think not.

The Full Monty- Fully Exposed Edition is a great upgrade for those who have the original DVD. Those who haven’t seen the film will enjoy this dramatic comedy, as long as they’re not too put off by the actors’ heavy accents and use of unintelligible British slang. But then again, you can always just watch the film using subtitles, as I did.