Who would have guessed that the year's most uplifting film would be about a group of out of shape men taking all their clothes off to make some quick cash? But that is what we get with "The Full Monty," a small film from Britain which manages to take a lewd idea and turn it into a winning, heartfelt human comedy.
"The Full Monty" could have taken the concept of overweight and scrawny men stripping and played it broadly like an extended Chris Farley sketch.
Instead, the film gives us real characters going through tough times and somehow transforms stripping from a degrading low to an inspired high.
We see in a news reel under the opening credits that Sheffield was once an up and rising steel manufacturing city with an optimistic future.
Twenty five years later, however, the steel mills have shut down and their laid off workers spend their days playing cards in a job finding center.
Gaz (Robert Carlyle) and his overweight friend Dave (Mark Addy) are two such layabouts whose lives are quickly going down the toilet. Aside from having no work, Gaz's ex-wife is trying to keep him from seeing their son and the ever insecure Dave believes his wife has fallen for a younger, slimmer man.
It is when they pass by a local bar in which the whole female community has come out to see some Chippendales dancers that Gaz gets an idea to turn their lives around. If the Chippendales dancers can do it, why can't they?
To help them get their act together they recruit former supervisor and avid dancer Gerald (Tom Wilkinson). Gerald is an older man whose life, like Gaz and Dave's, needs something, anything, to keep him going. He has yet to tell his wife he lost his job six months ago and still goes off to work everyday trying to keep the charade alive.
Together they hold auditions to round out the troupe. They pick up Horse (Paul Barber), who may be old but sure can dance, and Guy (Hugo Spencer) who may not dance but sure is well endowed. Along the way the suicidal and sexually confused Lumper (Steve Huison) joins the gang.
It is from their slowly developing strip routine that most of the laughs come from. Practicing in an abandoned steel mill they find that it is not as easy to gracefully.
But with the discovery of g-strings, Velcro removable pants and Gerald's tanning booth, the routine begins to come together. Their dancing is so infectious that when waiting in line for their unemployment checks their theme music is being played and they cannot help but to break into their practiced routine.
Soon they find that they have to go even further to top the Chippendales dancers and get an audience. They have to go all the way to the Full Monty, British slang for being completely naked.
The humor tends toward the low brow, there are plenty of bare behinds and the movie is worth seeing just to learn all the British slang for men's privates, but the characters are never turned into mere caricatures for us to laugh at.
Robert Carlyle lets loose as Gaz. He is able to go from a hilarious impromptu strip routine to an almost painfully awkward moments with his disapproving son.
Carlyle is almost unrecognizable from his turn as the violence addicted Begbie in "Trainspotting," last year's other break-out hit from England. His hair has gone blond and he plays Gaz as a fast-talking, trouble-making loser whose heart, at least, is in the right place.
Gaz's sidekick Dave lacks the misguided confidence of his good friend. We see scenes between him and his wife who after years of marriage he still does not feel comfortable with.
Dave has the greatest problem with stripping, he is not ready to expose his monstrous gut to the world at large.
Gerald's possessions are being repossessed right from under him. His wife has finally found out the truth and has thrown him out. And poor Lumper has to spend his free time caring for his ailing mother.
Yet none of these, for the most part, bog the story down. These more serious scenes are not overdone or drenched in sappiness like in most comedies trying to get us to care about the characters.
Of course, their plan does not go exactly as was hoped. One dress rehearsal is broken up by the police, but fortunately it allows them a chance to critique their performance by watching a tape from the security camera. They become a laughingstock to the entire community, but it only spurs them on some more.
Stripping becomes a sort of metaphor for overcoming all the challenges in their lives. Their families are ashamed of them and the community is laughing at them but they have practiced and planned and for once in their lives are not willing to give up.
The beauty of "The Full Monty" is that the characters and the film believe that their stripping will in somehow solve all their problems.
It is this unabashed optimism which seeps through to the audience as well. We root for them, feel for them and despite how unattractive they are we can't help but hope that they make it all the way to the Full Monty.
