Peter Cattaneo’s comedy is warm, funny and unusually considerate of its unemployed would-be strippers, with Robert Carlyle leading a deft ensemble. It is too quick to cheer us up about hardship, but the affection feels earned.
Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty takes a striptease scheme seriously enough to make it funny. Its unemployed Sheffield steelworkers need money, but they also need something to do together that does not begin and end with admitting defeat. We recommend it warmly for the care it gives these men and the ease with which its cast makes their company enjoyable. Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay understands how easily a joke can become a way of avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. That understanding serves the comedy better than its rather tidy treatment of unemployment.
Robert Carlyle’s Gaz gives the enterprise the necessary forward push without becoming a salesman for the film’s good intentions. There is enough self-mockery in the performance to keep his determination from getting tiresome. Mark Addy, as Dave, makes physical embarrassment matter without asking us to pity him, while Tom Wilkinson’s Gerald brings a useful stiffness to this company. Their differences keep the group from becoming a row of interchangeable comic turns. Cattaneo lets them be awkward without treating awkwardness as a character defect.
We were moved by the men’s unease about their bodies, particularly the discomfort Addy brings to Dave. A comedy about stripping can get a cheap laugh just by putting an unathletic man in front of an audience; here, his awareness of being looked at matters. Beaufoy gives the men home lives that make their pride comprehensible, even when it gets in their way. That helps the embarrassment remain recognisable even when the scheme itself is far-fetched.
John de Borman’s cinematography and Gottlieb’s production design keep the Sheffield setting credible without making it a display of misery. That matters in a film asking us to laugh at a plan born of having no work. The physical comedy has an everyday awkwardness: ordinary bodies attempting something that demands a confidence their owners do not possess. Cattaneo is good at letting us notice the incongruity without encouraging us to feel superior.
Editors Nick Moore and David Freeman keep the exchanges brisk enough for the jokes to register without pressing each one for a second laugh. At 91 minutes, the film has little room for waste, although the later stretch loses some of the early urgency. Anne Dudley’s music helps sustain the warmth between comic business and hurt feelings. We occasionally wanted Cattaneo to leave a little more discomfort unresolved, rather than make quite so sure that the evening remained pleasant.
The larger weakness is that getting the men together sometimes seems enough of an answer to having no work. Beaufoy is alert to the shame unemployment can bring, but less searching about what a strip act cannot fix. Working-class ensemble comedies often have this trouble: the shared task becomes so enjoyable that the circumstances requiring it receive less attention. Here, the affection can make hardship seem more manageable than the film has any right to suggest. Watch it with company, with a little patience for its eagerness to cheer everyone up.
