The Full Monty

Rated - SIMMERING

This film is likeable, mildly funny, well acted, but nowhere near as fabulous as it has been painted. It is a slight film, in many ways. It does have a surprisingly important theme: the disempowerment of men by unemployment, and the corresponding rise in the economic power of women, leading to a new-found freedom and strength, which then compounds the problem for men, who find themselves more and more irrelevant to their women, and more and more impotent.

It is a one-joke movie, and the punchline is drawn out over the maximum time possible. It isn't stretched too far, but it is stretched. And I was disappointed in the way it dealt with the gay sub-theme. This seemed like an after-thought to me. It was as if the film makers thought: "Gee, we don't have enough here for a whole film, and a couple of our characters don't have enough to do. We need a little sub-plot here, with a bit of a surprise and a joke. I've got it. Let's make them gay!" How can you do that, and then allow everyone to go "Oh, OK. That's nice." It just didn't ring true for me in that traditional working-class environment. But maybe I am wrong on that point - maybe things in Yorkshire have changed more than I thought.

It's a light-hearted film, with some very good choreography, by the way, but no world-beater.