Today’s Prayer Focus
MOVIE REVIEW

The Full Monty

Reviewed by: Kevin J. Burk
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Very Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Comedy
Length:
Year of Release: 1997
USA Release:
Featuring
Director
Producer
Distributor

“The Full Monty” has become one of the increasing number of independent films that has managed to breakout into the mainstream. It had several amusing moments, but unfortunately the moral shortcomings outweighed its originality and clever humor.

The story follows a group of down and out men in the formerly booming, British steel town of Sheffield. One of the men notices a poster for a traveling male stripper show. Unable to pay his child support, which will allow him joint custody of his son, he decides to put together his own stripper show, using himself and his friends as the dancers. The most hilarious moments of the film were the practice sessions as the guys try to work up a routine. Never mind they can’t dance, have merely average bodies, and no experience at this sort of thing. Amazingly, once the town hears who is going to be in the show, guys they know, the tickets sell out. Along the way, the characters deal with the problems in their own personal lives, though often not in a Biblical way. In the end, they do the show and give the audience “the full monty,” a slang term for total nudity.

I had mixed feeling about going to see a film about stripping, which I feel is a way of commercializing lust. While the film contains some moral messages about friendship and perseverance, these are outweighed by the immoral foundation of the whole plot. While it does have some moments of surprising humor, I cannot recommend this film to other Christians.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
…I really enjoyed this movie. To me, the story revolved around friendship and overcoming obstacles. The main characters forged a strong bond when they struggled to regain their dignity and overcome the obstacles that threw themselves across their path at almost every turn. Even though I enjoyed the movie, there are many scenes in this movie that a Christian may not like: shoplifting, stripping, bad language, homosexuality, and a young child helping put the act together. The shoplifting was flagrant and I did not enjoy those scenes. The stripping theme permeated the movie, but I had not difficulty with it because these men were never portrayed as Christians. The language is also pervasive, but, again, the language used showed the men as they would talk. The homosexual scene was so low key that I missed it when I first saw the movie (two men hold hands during a funeral). Finally, the young boy helps his father partly because it is his future that will be decided…
Debra Kuyatt, age 40