The Full Monty
with Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, Tom Wilkinson, Steve Huison
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Directed by Peter Cattaneo (Fox Searchlight)
by William Ham
How times have changed for men in the movies. The strong masculine archetype is a thing of the past – the closest we get to the righteous, heroic John Wayne type in the modern cinema is that akido-practicing hunk (of pony-tailed dogwood) Steven Seagal, the anti-hero has been transmogrified into the rampaging prick, and every single comedy Hollywood hacks up these days seems to require that a guy gets slammed in the balls at least once per reel. (I’ve come to consider this the ultimate embodiment of the changing roles of gender in the mass media – women get all the strong, multi-faceted roles these days, and the Sapphic streak that’s recently risen to the surface gives them the opportunity to cut the patriarchy out of the equation entirely, so the men, who still wield most of the power but are feeling increasingly guilty about it, portray themselves as libidinous, self-centered buffoons who deserve all the pain they get. What better way to express their self-loathing than a good, sharp crunch in the yo-yos? Guys, maybe it’s time we learned how to say “sorry” before we turn ourselves into a nation of hurt-looking sopranos with funny walks.)
The testocracy continues its long, slow abdication, the collapse of thousands of years of jealous control over the real perpetuators of the race, and it’s safe to say that we’re going down screaming. The fact that gay films are everywhere lately (and have crossed into the mainstream with the arrival of In & Out) gives you some clue as to the shift – more men are acting effeminate, more women acting butch, and is it me or are actresses even getting taller as they get tougher? The final nail in the misogynist’s coffin had to be Showgirls, a picture so transparent in its hostility (remember the scene where Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon talk about how much they love doggie chow?) that it was almost crazily courageous, the final desperate charge of the losing army in a war rendered unwinnable. So now what? Hollywood, predictably, is stuck for an answer, opting instead to look backwards or split the planet entirely rather than deal with the issue. Yet again, we must look to the Brits, in the form of the surprise hit The Full Monty, to show us the way, to provide a little insight into the flailing fall of manhood in our time and give us a few genuine laughs while doing it.
In summary, it’s a combination of the old Shirley Temple “let’s-put-on-a-show” plotline, Flashdance and Striptease, as run through the gritty working-class sensibility of Ken Loach with a screwball spin. But what makes The Full Monty so thoroughly charming and innately sly is the way it both laughs at and celebrates the immature, preposterous nature of men, the irresponsibility, vanity, and false bravado that barely mask their total vulnerability, doing all they can to chase away the knowledge that they’re not fooling anyone for a moment. It’s perfect comic territory – embarrassment is one of the most fertile sources of yuks there is, and this scenario wrings a pint-glass’ worth of juice from situations that move between utter humiliation and total obliviousness to the same. (The set-up involving the lads’ [un]dress rehearsal is a classic of escalating mortification; another one, involving a ’70s disco number and the unemployment line, is practically a modern-day reconciliation of the Depression-age fantasy/reality dichotomy of Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven.)