THE FULL MONTY
UK, 1997.
Directed by Peter Cattaneo.
SHORT REVIEW
The Full Monty is a touching blend of social realism, fairy-tale and humour set in contemporary Sheffield.
Times are hard. Gaz (Robert Carlyle) needs money and comes up with the unlikely idea of a strip-tease, Chippendales-style. He and his mate Dave recruit their team, all recognisable individuals with personal, marital or sexual problems.
The money matters to all of them, but more important are the themes of self-respect and mutual support in the face of adversity. Despite everything, they learn to work as a group, overcome embarrassment and move their lives forward a little. It’s a 90% happy ending.
It is not a solution to mass employment, but it is a witty and sympathetic account of ordinary people’s lives.
LONG REVIEW
In contemporary Sheffield six hard-up men decide to perform a strip-tease to make some money. This could be a piece of reportage about the post-industrial world and the victims of Thatcherism in the social realist tradition of British cinema, or perhaps a successor to the lumbering sex comedies of the 1970s.
In practice The Full Monty is neither erotic nor pornographic and its social realism is tempered with humour and gentle fantasy to produce an engaging, almost prudish account of ordinary blokes (and to a lesser extent their wives) grappling with a range of difficulties.
The characterisation is sharp, each character individual and convincing: Gaz (Robert Carlyle) the former steel-worker, still behaving like a thoughtless teenager. Dave, the self-styled ’fat bastard’. Lomper, the suicidal security man who lives with his ageing mother. Gerald, status-conscious and unable to tell his wife that he has lost his job. Horse, with his ironic nickname. Guy, dim but well-endowed. All have some personal, marital or sexual difficulty at odds with their traditional notions of masculinity and gender roles.
The wives and other family members generally make a better job of paying the bills and maintaining ‘normal’ family life. In a neat role-reversal Gaz’s son Nathan is mature beyond his years and ultimately helps dad grow up a bit.
The observation of the various milieux and social niceties is economic and effective: the facades of different houses, glimpses of gardens, casual street scenes, the waste land of the city are all familiar. The pithy dialogue, up-beat music and combination of situation comedy and farce all contribute effectively.
The money matters but is overtaken by the more important themes of self-respect and mutual support in the face of adversity. Despite the men’s obvious shortcomings (too fat, too thin, balding, bad hip, can’t dance and more) they learn to work as a group, overcome embarrassment and move their lives forward just a little. It could be a modern fairy-tale with its 90% happy ending.
Originally released in the UK in August 1997, The Full Monty benefited from the euphoria following the landslide election victory of the Labour Party in May. Hopes were high for social regeneration, greater social justice and an agenda of respect. Watching the film again in 2009 is sobering, the present economic crisis fuelling another wave of anger and sense of powerlessness. The Full Monty does not claim to offer a solution to mass employment but Gaz’s short-termism and the precariousness of the men’s situation are more poignant. It remains a witty and sympathetic account of ordinary people’s lives but still a fantasy.
CRITERIA FOR REVIEWING
Explain… Explore… Entice… but not necessarily in that order.
These aims seem to me to summarise the ideal of the film reviewer.
Film reviews are traditionally written on the assumption that readers have not yet seen the film concerned, so the writer must provide a certain amount of factual or quasi-factual information. Hence the plot summary, however brief, which gives a basic explanation.
Reviews also need to explore characters, narratives, themes and techniques so as to suggest why a film might be significant and how it aims to hold the audience’s attention.
Finally, reviews offer an overall opinion about the film to help readers judge whether or not it is for them. Enticing the potential spectator should not be an uncritical public relations exercise for the distributor but should encourage the reader to approach a film in an appropriate, thoughtful and sympathetic manner.
A review of 100 words leaves little room to do more than provide a brief plot summary, indicate genre and stars (or lack of them) and offer a summary evaluation of the film. A review of 400 words allows the writer to start to examine themes in more detail, relate the film to wider social, cultural and aesthetic concerns and offer a more nuanced evaluation with clear supporting evidence. But even with 400 words there is little room for more than headlines.
As always, reality is more complicated. The boundaries of the film review are ill-defined: film reviewing, film analysis and film criticism are partially overlapping activities which may all be more or less sophisticated in their approach, depending on their scale, site of publication and intended readership. At one end of the spectrum we have film treated as simple entertainment: the colloquial writing of the tabloid press, magazines such as Empire and Total Film and many web-sites aims for immediate impact. It is readily accessible to a very wide readership and often assumes wide prior knowledge of mainstream (American) movies. On the other hand, it is not remotely concerned with foreign-language films or experimental and avant-garde works. At the other end of the spectrum we have film treated as intellectual stimulation and a serious form of cultural expression: the formal writing of Sight & Sound aims for precision and depth and systematically avoids emotive responses. It assumes that readers are willing to consider complex and unexpected issues and borders on the academic in its range of reference.
In my own writing I probably lean more towards the latter than the former – a reflection on my professional life no doubt – although I think that this is not particularly obvious in the two pieces about The Full Monty. I have a special interest in the relationship between subjects and themes and their treatment by film-makers, but this has proved hard to explore even in 400 words. (If only I had 1,000 words to play with !) I try to place film in its wider social and cultural context but assume no academic knowledge of film on the reader’s part.
In reality also many reviews are read after the event, not only before viewing, so I hope that my writing gives those readers cause to reflect further on the film and perhaps find some extra dimension in it, maybe even to return for a second or third viewing. Some of my most enjoyable viewing experiences have involved rediscovering films and re-evaluating them as I bring wider knowledge and experience to bear on them.
BIOGRAPHY
Higher Education & Professional Training:
BA Honours, Modern Languages, University of Oxford, 1972.
MA, Film Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, 1993.
Certificate of Education (FE), Huddersfield Polytechnic, 1990.
Employment:
My professional career from 1975 until retirement in 2008 was spent at Leeds Trinity & All Saints (University of Leeds, UK).
In this period I worked as a member of academic staff teaching French, then Media and Film. In the period 2004-2008 I was Director of Film Studies, designing and then running a series of new undergraduate degree courses in Film and Television. My special interests lie in European cinema and the amorphous and evolving field of ‘world cinema(s)’.
Wider responsibilities at different times involved the co-ordination of Access activities for mature and other non-traditional students, liaison with partner universities in France, Germany and Japan, and working on institutional exchange projects under the aegis of the European Commission’s ERASMUS and Leonardo da Vinci Programmes. In 1996-1999 I co-managed a project on professional applications of Film Studies which included a day conference for those in the ministry and caring professions ‘Seeking Understanding – Reel Feelings’.
Community-based Activities:
Since my student days I have been closely involved with the Film Societies movement in the UK and have served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the British Federation of Film Societies (1982-1987) and of the BFFS Yorkshire Regional Group in various capacities since 1979.
I also served as a member of the Film & Video Advisory Panels of Yorkshire Arts Association and Yorkshire & Humberside Arts Board in the period 1989-1996.
Film-related Publications:
Occasional reviews and articles on film topics in Film magazine and Arts Yorkshire.
From 1992 onwards, programme writer for annual study weekends of British Federation of Film Societies at Scarborough.
MA thesis on British Film Comedy published in web journal Close Up - the electronic journal of British Cinema, Issue 1, Winter 1996/97.
