The Full Monty (Special Edition)

Introduction

Ten years after the film was made, nine years after it was released, and eight years (almost to the month) it was nominated for 4 Oscars (winning one for Orginal Score to a Comedy), Fox have released a 2-disk special edition of what is dubbed `the most successful British film of all time`.

I`m sure there are not that many people left who have missed out on this film by now, so the introduction will be brief.

The story concerns a group of disparate and increasingly desperate unemployed men in Sheffield who are seeing their lives, and their families, slip away from them fast. For such Yorkshiremen, this amounts to emasculation, especially when witnessing a woman peeing standing up in the Gents of a supposedly Working Men`s Club. The club is in fact, full of screaming women who are watching the Chippendales strut their stuff. This would never have been allowed in the old days, and is a not-so-subtle, but highly effective metaphor on the changing times.

The only way to regain some sense of self-esteem, and pick up a bit of cash for maintenance payments on the way, is to form themselves into their own version of the Chippendales who will perform for one night only.

Elsewhere on this site, Dan Bates quite rightly bemoans the lack of effort and care Fox made when releasing this film on DVD for the first time several years ago. It was a shameful affair, but one which was all too often seen at the time, even for highly successful films. And as we all know by now, a few years after, `special editions` hit the streets so that people were impelled to buy the film again. Anything more than the previously released trailer, subtitles in 56 languages and risible stereo sound had to be better.

Well, hopefully…

Video

The video is presented in Widescreen Anamorphic 1:85, and compared to the previous release, is a lot cleaner. There is still a softness about the picture though, which doesn`t detract from the viewing experience, but everything appears a little colourless as a result.

Audio

There is no comparison with the sound of the earlier release and this version - and I mean this in the best possible way.

At last, we have the 2.0 / 5.1 / DTS (UK English only) choice. Anyone with any sense would go for the latter as the song tracks now have a life of their own, and you`ll certainly feel the difference, even when watching on a relatively low volume.

Admittedly, the DTS is a little contrived when the music is absent, almost as if it had to be used as it was there, but it`s not too off-putting.

Other sound options include a `US English` track. This is not an overdubbing with American accents (thankfully), but an attempt by Fox to make the film more approachable to the US audience by dubbing more familiar expressions over what they considered to be `colloquial` words and phrases, such as `DIY`, `Works` band` and `top himself`.

This isn`t as funny as my favourite example of this form of bastardisation, the R1 (and the best) version of Gregory`s Girl, where we get a `Scottish language` track (the original), and an `English language` track (a hopelessly `softened` but easier to understand overdub with different actors), but it`s still amusing.

Features

As we should expect with the repackaging of `the most successful.etc etc`, there are many extras, but these are of varying degrees of interest, and quite a few are almost worthless.

The best, and longest, is a 30 minute `featurette` (is this the same as a documentary?) on the state of British cinema in the `90s, describing the efforts people made to make films which were a realistic reflection of life in this country (quite often outside the bright lights of London), but also needed something to appeal to international audiences. It wasn`t always successful.

We also have two commentaries. The first, and most interesting to listen to is from the director Peter `kindofsortoflike` Cattaneo with Mark Addy.
The second is by the producer, Uberto Pasolini. This probably contains some vital snippets of information, but he doesn`t speak throughout the film, and has an appallingly dreary voice (sorry Uberto), so I switched to something else after a while.

It`s certainly a shame that more contributions from the other actors weren`t forthcoming. The only Robert Carlyle spot is a couple of on-set 1996 soundbytes, and is rather disappointing.

There is also a relatively interesting contribution from composer Anne Dudley (the Oscar winner) explaining about extracts from her music (a little too obvious for my taste, as she tells us that `the saxes are playing the tune now`, and `then the harmonica plays a melody` - thanks Anne!), but becomes more watchable when she describes the efforts they had to make to get Tom Jones to record `You can leave your hat on` (it was apparently going to be the Joe Cocker version, but this was deemed too slow).

The US English track is also explained in detail, as an etymologist (who is obviously enjoying her time in the spotlight) gets to grips with the difference in understanding of certain words and phrases. You even learn about the reason for the rise in DIY enthusiasm in this country.

Apart from this, I found the other extras to be rather cheap `stocking-fillers` (although the constant retakes in the final strip are a bit of a laugh).

Conclusion

Whether this film deserves to have been so popular will always be a moot point. It`s certainly a highly charming, and affecting film at times, despite treating the subject matter of unemployment and self-destructive tendencies a little too glibly.

The original UK release was mid-August 1997, but not much notice was taken until two weeks later when the Princess of Wales died. People in this country (and eventually across the States, and especially Australia) needed to cope with whatever feelings they had at the time, and it became the only film in this country which gained a huge audience over that period. They wanted to feel better about their own lives, and this was the perfect film to help.

Ok, perhaps I`m being a little too cynical.

The Full Monty is certainly a film of its time, but has rapidly shown its age. It feels as if it was made a long time before the late `90s, although this is not a bad thing. It certainly hearkens back to the more gritty Northern dramas such as `This Sporting Life and others of that ilk, but is a simpler story and more lightweight. Perhaps we have all moved on.

But, an enjoyable disc overall, and a far better package than before. If this has always been a favouite, but you have always held out for a better version to come along, or if it`s to be a replacement for the previous shoddy version then you should definitely pick it up.