Taglines: The year’s most revealing comedy.
The Full Monty movie storyline. The once-successful steel mills of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, have shut down and most of the staff have been made redundant. Former steelworkers Gary “Gaz” Schofield and Dave Horsefall have resorted to stealing scrap metal from the abandoned mills to sell. Gaz is facing trouble from his ex-wife, Mandy and her boyfriend, Barry over child support payments that he has failed to pay since losing his job. Gaz’s son, Nathan, loves his father but wishes they could do more “normal stuff” in their time together.
One day, Gaz spots a crowd of women lined up outside a local club to see a Chippendale’s striptease act. He gets the idea to form his own strip tease group using local men in hopes of making enough money to pay off his child support obligations. The first to join the group is Lomper, a security guard at the steel mill where Dave and Gaz once worked.
Depressed, Lomper attempts suicide, but is rescued by Dave who convinces him to join the group. Next, they recruit Gerald Cooper, their former foreman at the mill, who is hiding the fact that he is unemployed from his wife. Gaz and Dave see Gerald and his wife, Linda, at a dance class, and recruit him to teach them some actual dance moves.
The four men hold an open audition to recruit more members and settle on Horse, an older man who is nevertheless a good dancer, and Guy, who can’t dance but proves himself to be well-endowed. The six men begin to practice their act. Gaz then learns that he has to pay £100 in order to secure the club for the night. He cannot afford this, but Nathan gets the money out of his savings.
When they are greeted by two local women while they put up posters for the show, Gaz boasts they’re better than the real Chippendales because they go “the full monty”. Dave drops out due to body image issues and gets a job as a security guard at Asda. The others do a public rehearsal at the mill in front of some female relatives of Horse, but are caught mid-show by a passing policeman, and Gaz, Gerald and Horse are arrested for indecent exposure.
The Full Monty is a 1997 British comedy-drama film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer. The screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy.
The film is set in Sheffield, England and, starting off with a travelogue of the city in 1972, tells the story of six unemployed men, four of them former steel workers, who decide to form a male striptease act (à la Chippendale dancers) in order to gather enough money to get somewhere else and for the main character, Gaz, to be able to see his son.
Gaz declares that their show will be better than the Chippendales dancers because they will go “the full monty”—strip all the way—hence the film’s title. Despite being a comedy, the film also touches on serious subjects such as unemployment, fathers’ rights, depression, impotence, homosexuality, body image, working class culture and suicide.
The Full Monty (1997)
Directed by: Peter Cattaneo
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, William Snape, Paul Barber, Lesley Sharp, Emily Woof, Deirdre Costello, Paul Butterworth, Andrew Livingston
Screenplay by: Simon Beaufoy
Production Design by: Max Gottlieb
Cinematography by: John de Borman
Film Editing by: David Freeman, Nick Moore
Costume Design by: Jill Taylor
Art Direction by: Chris Roope
Music by: Anne Dudley
MPAA Rating: R for language and some nudity.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: August 29, 1997
Hits: 102
