The Full Monty
The Full Monty is a 1997 British comedy 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 in the North of England during the 1990s, and 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 make some money and for the main character, Gaz, to be able to see his son. Gaz declares that their show will be much better than the renowned Chippendales dancers because they will go "the full monty"—strip all the way—hence the film's title.
For other uses, see The Full Monty (disambiguation).The Full Monty
David Freeman
Nick Moore
Channel Four Films
- 13 August 1997 (United States)
- 29 August 1997 (United Kingdom)
91 minutes[1]
United Kingdom
English
$3.5 million[2]
$257.9 million[2]
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 was a major critical success upon release and an international commercial success, grossing over $250 million from a budget of only $3.5 million. It was the highest-grossing film in the UK until it was outsold by Titanic. It won the BAFTA Award and European Film Award for Best Film, and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score, winning the last.
The British Film Institute ranked The Full Monty the 25th best British film of the 20th century. The film was adapted into a musical in 2000, a play in 2013 and a television series. A follow-up TV series to the original 1997 film, filmed in and around Sheffield and Manchester[3] in 2022 and early 2023, was released on 14 June 2023 on Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US.
Plot[edit]
In the mid-1990s, the once-successful steel mills of Sheffield, South Yorkshire have shut down and most of the workers have been made redundant. Former steelworkers Gary "Gaz" Schofield and Dave Horsfall have resorted to stealing scrap metal from the abandoned mills to sell in order to make some cash, taking Gaz's son Nathan with them for assistance, but a security guard keeps surprising them and locking them inside the steel mill.
Gaz is facing trouble from his ex-wife Mandy and her boyfriend Barry over child support payments that he has been unable to pay since losing his job. Nathan lives with Mandy and Barry but Gaz has joint custody of him with Mandy. Nathan wishes he and his father Gaz could do more "normal stuff" together. Mandy is seeking a court ruling giving her sole custody of Nathan, whom Gaz loves dearly. Gaz is desperate for money and for Nathan's love.
One day, Gaz spots a crowd of women lined up outside a local club to see a Chippendales' striptease act, and is inspired to form his own striptease group using local men, hoping to make 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, whose suicide attempt they interrupt. Next, they recruit Gerald Cooper, their former foreman, who is hiding his unemployment 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.
Looking for more recruits, the four men hold an open audition and settle on Horse, an older man who is nevertheless a good dancer, and Guy, who can't dance at all but proves to be unusually well-endowed. The six men begin to practise their act. Gaz then learns that he has to pay a £100 deposit in order to secure the club for the night. He cannot afford this, but Nathan gets the money out of his savings, saying he trusts Gaz to repay him. When they are greeted by two local women while putting up posters for the show, Gaz boasts that they are better than the real Chippendales because they go "the full monty". Dave, struggling with his body image, drops out and finds a job as a security guard at Asda. The others publicly rehearse at the mill for some female relatives of Horse, but a passing policeman catches them mid-show, and Gaz, Gerald and Horse are arrested for indecent exposure, costing Gaz the right to see Nathan. Lomper and Guy manage to escape to Lomper's house, where they look lovingly at each other, starting a relationship.
Gerald is thrown out by Linda after bailiffs arrive at their house and seize their belongings to pay Gerald's debts, resulting in him having to stay with Gaz. Later Gaz goes to Asda and asks Dave if he could "borrow" a jacket for Lomper's mother's funeral. Dave agrees and also decides to quit his security job. They steal two suit jackets and go to the funeral together.
Soon, the group find the act and their arrest has popularised them. They agree to forgo the plan, until Gaz learns that the show is sold out. He convinces the others to do it just for one night only. Gerald is unsure as he has now got the job that Gaz and Dave earlier tried to sabotage his interview for, but agrees to do it just once. Initially Dave still refuses, but regains his confidence after encouragement from his wife, Jean, and joins the rest of the group minutes before they go on stage. Nathan also arrives with Dave, having secretly come along, and tells Gaz that Mandy is there, but she would not let Barry go with her.
Gaz refuses to do the act because there are men in the audience (including the police officers who watched the footage of the security camera's recording of them earlier), when the posters were supposed to say it was for women only. The other five are starting the act when Nathan orders his father to go out on stage. Gaz, proud of his son, joins the others and performs in front of the audience and Mandy, who seems to see him in a new light. The film finishes with the group performing on stage in front of an enthusiastic packed house, stripping to Tom Jones's version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" (their hats being the final item removed) with astounding success.
Release[edit]
Critical reception[edit]
The film surprised critics when it was first released, earning near-universal acclaim, and it went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Writing in Time Out New York regarding the implications of the film Andrew Johnston stated: "Monty is much less ribald than it sounds. The funniest moments are frequently the most subtle, like when five of the strippers, standing in the dole line, find themselves unable to resist dancing in place when Donna Summers's "Hot Stuff" comes on the radio. There's surprisingly little raunch, in part because the film can't stop thinking of women as enemies of a sort (at least Monty is less offensive than Brassed Off in that department). And refreshingly, its definition of male bonding is broad enough to let two of the lads find love in each other's arms."[12]
Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively reports that 96% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 55 reviews, with an average score of 7.50/10. The consensus reads, "Cheeky and infectiously good-natured, The Full Monty bares its big beating heart with a sly dose of ribald comedy."[13] On Metacritic, which assesses films with a score out of 100, the film has a score of 75 based on 31 critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[14]
Box office[edit]
The Full Monty opened on six screens in the United States on 13 August 1997 and grossed $244,375 in its first five days, with a per-screen average in its opening weekend of $29,430; the highest for a film that weekend.[2] The film expanded to 10 screens the following weekend and then 36 screens for the Labor Day weekend (29 August – 1 September) where it remained the film with the highest per-screen average gross ($25,344) and grossed a total of $1.7 million in its first 20 days.[2][15] When the film was released in the United Kingdom on 29 August 1997 on 224 screens, it grossed £1,593,928 in its first 3 days, ranking second at the UK box office behind Men in Black, which grossed £1.7 million in its fifth week of release from almost twice the number of screens (411).[16] However, it beat Men in Black for the week and took the weekend crown the following weekend and remained number one at the UK box office for the next nine weeks, the longest a film had remained at number one in the UK.[17][18][19] It became the highest-grossing British film of all-time in its ninth week of release, surpassing Four Weddings and a Funeral.[20] It was displaced as the weekend number one by Face/Off but remained the highest-grosser for the week and returned to spend the next two weekends back at number one.[19][21][22] It was the highest-grossing film in the UK for thirteen consecutive weeks and eleven weekends.[23] In the US, it expanded to 387 screens on 12 September and grossed $2.9 million for the weekend to finish in fifth place at the box office. It expanded further to 650 screens the following weekend where it retained its fifth place.[2]
It also opened at number one in Australia where it remained for five weeks. In France, it opened at the same time as The Lost World: Jurassic Park and recorded a per screen average of $16,699 compared to the former's $19,133, finishing in third place for the week.[24][25][26][27] On 27 January 1998, it surpassed Jurassic Park to become the highest-grossing film in the UK and finished with a gross of £52.2 million ($85 million).[28][29][2] In the United States and Canada it finished its run with a gross of $46 million. It grossed $127 million in other international markets for a worldwide gross of $258 million.[2]
Accolades and recognition[edit]
The Full Monty won the BAFTA Award for Best Film in 1997, beating presumed frontrunners Titanic and L.A. Confidential and Carlyle won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. It was nominated for a total of four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score and Best Original Screenplay.
In 1997, the Academy Award for Best Original Score was split up into two categories: Dramatic and Musical or Comedy. In light of 1997's big winner, Titanic, the film won only the Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score by Anne Dudley, with the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars going to Titanic and its director James Cameron and the Best Original Screenplay Oscar going to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting. The film was also nominated for the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.
In 1999, it was ranked #25 on the BFI Top 100 British films list. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Full Monty the 49th greatest comedy film of all time. By that year it earned an estimated £194 million at the box office worldwide.[30]
Controversy[edit]
New Zealand playwrights Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair filed a £180 million lawsuit against the producers of The Full Monty in 1998.[31] They claim that the film blatantly infringed on their play, Ladies Night, which toured both Britain and New Zealand.[32][33] Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair created a website containing their play in response to statements from the producers of The Full Monty that claimed the two productions were not alike. The underlying rights were attributed to co-producer, Paul Bucknor, and the lawsuit was settled out of court; as part of the agreement, the website containing Ladies Night was shut down.[34]