Clean Undies and the Bigscreen
Dr. Daniel's review of The Full Monty

medical miracle

Starring Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Lesley Sharp, Emily Woof, Paul Barber, Hugo Speer, Deirdre Costello, Bruce Jones.

Directed by Peter Cattaneo. Rated R.

    Okay, here's the deal. It took a good bit of looking, but I finally found a place nearby that shows "art films." Now by "art films," I'm not talking about those six-hour films of somebody sleeping, like they made in the '60s. And, no, I'm not talking about documentaries. People tend to group documentaries into the art genre simply 'cause most folks don't want to watch a movie if there's not any killin', lovin', or blowin' up in it, and, with maybe one or two exceptions, not a lot of documentaries show any of those three topics. No, "art films" around here means anything from another country, or anything that stars anybody that nobody's heard of. Usually I have to trek up to Atlanta to find a good foreign flick. Or when I'm in some huge city for a conference or something, I get to catch one or two. But now, thanks to the slack immigration laws and a huge fluke of car trouble, there's a decent "art house" just across the county line, over in Rocky Crick.
   Two years ago, a truck carrying illegal Canadian immigrants broke down in Rocky Crick. The ten Canadians, all members of the Maple Leaf Tumbling Circus, hung around for a week or two squatting in and around a two-seater phone booth, 'til Sheriff Lackmore ran up on them and made them move into town to a boarding house. They were headed down to Sarasota to try and meet up with the Ringling Brothers show during the off-season, but they were broke and couldn't get the truck fixed, so they got jobs to scratch up some cash. One of them, Miss Trudy, was, among other things, a film fan, especially foreign films.
    Well, Miss Trudy got tired of waiting for things to happen, so she talked her brothers into staying in Rocky Crick when the others headed on down to Florida. She sweet-talked the bank president into a small business loan, and rented out a hole in the strip mall. It had been a launderette, and had this huge storage area in the back that the grocery store next door used for storing those 50-pound bags of dog food (there's a huge canine population in Rocky Crick for some reason.) Miss Trudy learned to run a 35mm projector while her brothers fixed up the back. A few curtains, some plastic chairs and a popcorn popper later, and Trudy's Soap Opera House was open for business. They run old movies and foreign films in the back, so folks can come in, do their laundry, and catch a flick while they wait. Business was slow for a while, but, after a bit it caught on, and cinemites come from miles around to see movies they otherwise would only get to read about.
    So the other night, I gathered up my dirty skivvies and headed over to get some fresh laundry and catch The Full Monty. And, I gotta tell you, I got the cleanest clothes I've had in a while, and saw one hell of a funny movie to boot!
    The story of The Full Monty is brilliantly simple. Times are tough in the little town of Sheffield. It was once "a city on the move, the jewel of Yorkshire's crown." But when the steel mill shuts down, it leaves everyone in a lurch, including a young man named Gaz (Robert Carlyle). Gaz is in danger of losing shared custody of his son, and he needs some greenbacks in a bad way. He gets a wild hair after hearing about a sold-out performance by the Chippendale dancers - why not become a male stripper? And, to make sure the plan works, he and his "dance troupe" will go "the full monty" (slang for "buck nekkid") instead of stopping at the Chippendale G-string things. He recruits some buddies form the unemployment line, and they set out to flashdance the night away.
    It'd have been easy to make this thing into a speeding farce, but, thankfully, director Peter Cattaneo and writer Simon Beaufoy picked another road to travel. Monty is a comedy with a lot of heart and no fear of showing it. Gaz's fellow dancers are just regular guys, you know? They're not stud muffins by any stretch of the imagination, so they have to swallow a lot of pride if they're going to carry out this scheme. And they've all been forced to cope with the idea that they aren't the breadwinners any more. The fragility of their "male identity" has been pushed to the limit. And because of all this, they all adopt an attitude of "what else have we got to lose." It's this very attitude that arms the movie with its tender but wacky sensibility.
    You may remember Carlyle from his vivid role as the quick-tempered Begbie in Trainspotting. This turn is a full 180 from that violent freakazoid. His humor comes from the point of tears rather than from his knuckles. His Gaz is a blue-collar schlepp, but a good-hearted blue-collar schlepp. He just wants to do right by his kid, no matter how low he has to sink. And the supporting cast rides the same boat as Carlyle. There's the loveable little chunk known as Dave (Mark Addy), who whines about his wide girth as he mournfully chomps another handful of candy bars. Look for Tom Wilkinson, too, as Gaz's former supervisor, Gerald, who lacks the courage to tell his wife that he's been on unemployment for the past six months.
    What director Peter Cattaneo, writer Simon Beaufoy, and the cast do best, though, is draw us into their world. They don't pull any punches when it comes to showing just how emasculating it can be to be broke, jobless, and desperate enough to try anything to earn a buck. The point of this movie is not bare privates, it's bare souls. The emotions we see are ones we all hope we never have to know. But at no time does anyone allow this thing to get preachy. It's not a lesson about pride. It's all about doing what you have to do, and doing it with as much humor as you can muster.
    I hope there's a way you folks can get to a theater showing The Full Monty. American theater owners still believe that we're all too stupid to get the jokes, I guess, 'cause it's still not in a wide release. It's out there, you just may have to hunt it down like the peanuts in some Cracker Jacks. But, believe me, it's well worth the search. You won't regret all the effort for a second, and I'd bet that you'll leave the theater telling someone else to hunt it down too.
    Hey. Worst case scenario: grab your ditty bag full of dirty drawers and dance down here to Miss Trudy's Soap Opera House. Bring your quarters and your Tide, and get ready to laugh those stains away.