THE FULL MONTY
Rated R - Running time: 1:30 - Reviewed 8/13/97
Author's Note: This is one of the ten movie reviews
I wrote for the October 30, 1997 issue of The Republican,
the first week my reviews were ever published there. Because of
space and time requirements, these ten reviews had to be especially
brief, some even shorter than this Author's Note. Someday I will
re-view them and re-review them so as to provide a more in-depth
commentary, but for now you'll just have to live with the short
version. Sorry. --JRM
America's love for British
humor continues. In fact, I think its Britishness is perhaps the
main appealing characteristic of this hilarious but rather average
story. The actors (Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, and several others)
are also definitely not flashy movie-star types — they're
average guys, in every sense of the phrase. They play a group
of out-of-work steelworkers who see that when the Chippendale
dancers come to town they make a killing, with the local women
lining up outside to see them strip. After a period of making
fun of the Chippendale "poofs" (while standing in line
at the job service office), they see the lucrative opportunity
presented to them. Except, since they are not as pretty as the
professional strippers, they're going to have to go for "The
Full Monty." As each one of the group has his own fears and
trepidations to overcome, they practice dancing to old disco hits
in their abandoned steel mill. By the night of the big show, they
have all made a journey of courage and hilarious self-searching.
****
Copyright
1997 by John R. McEwen and The
Republican
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