| 90 |
Variety
Bright and sassy, The Full Monty is a treat.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Laura Miller
So seamlessly buoyant and enjoyable that it's easy to miss how carefully and sensitively it's made.
|
| 88 |
San Francisco Examiner
There isn't a whole lot of fancy subplotting, just a potpourri of funny and engaging characters.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Takes a premise that seems ripe for broad, vulgar joking and turns it into a sly, even subtle, comedy.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Such pure, naked joy is utterly contagious.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
This wonderful 1997 comedy--about an unlikely group of men who are determined to strip to music rather than get day jobs--is genuinely effective at inverting gender stereotypes and other assumptions, and it's not the slightest bit heavy-handed.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
If you don't go expecting the depth and subtlety of a Mike Leigh working-class film, The Full Monty can be heart-warming fun with more serious undertones than you might have expected. [13 August 1997, Calendar, p.F-5]
|
| 80 |
Time
To make an unembarrassing movie about embarrassment is definitely an eye-opening achievement.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Alan Riding
Inevitably, the film has echoes of "Brassed Off," another recent British export. The Full Monty is less sentimental and arguably funnier.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
Along with witty, appropriately rough-hewn repartee and genuine poignancy, writer Simon Beaufoy manages to sustain suspense to the last gyration.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Rowdy, funny, surprisingly sweet.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Alice Smith
A very funny film that never sacrifices the lives of its characters to the needs of its story.
|
| 80 |
Mr. Showbiz
A bully good romp, and it thumbs its nose at the bloated blockbusters towering over it at the multiplexes by ending the moment it arrives at its raucous, richly deserved climax.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A winning mix of humor and poignant character examination, and a satisfying film.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
Andrea C. Basora
The portraits are spare but right on target. And the film keeps you laughing even as you feel the pain of the characters.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy has created full characters as vulnerable in their personal lives as in their work.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
The comic moments in this ingratiating bit of malarkey from director Peter Cattaneo and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (both TV trained, both making their feature debuts) are winning.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Ollove
Ceaselessly amiable, moving whimsically toward an ending that, while predictable, is a rousing, unfettered joy.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Simple, joyful and downright innocent movie.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The director, Peter Cattaneo, takes material that could would be at home in a sex comedy, and gives it gravity because of the desperation of the characters; we glimpse the home life of these men, who have literally been put on the shelf, and we see the wound to their pride.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Cattaneo's comedy has brash and boisterous scenes, but its message about the humiliations of unemployment is serious and insightful, and applies far beyond the English setting of this story.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
Originality may be at a premium here, but The Full Monty offers plenty of opportunities for laughter and genial smiles.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A laugh and a half, a genial crowd-pleaser.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Beaufoy and Cattaneo handle this potentially racy material with an engaging balance of good taste and outright slapstick.
|
| 70 |
Slate
The laughs are fuller when they're rooted in authentic desperation, and the premise is yeasty enough to keep the film from sinking into facile hopelessness.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Genuinely touching.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
Its own, tough-minded antidote to the grab-the-brass-ring whimsy of its premise.
|
| 67 |
Portland Oregonian
A nearly perfect piffle in an age when hardly any movie seems to know how to play the light notes well.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Feel-good comedy with none of the pejorative hints of innocuous blandness that term so often implies.
|
| 60 |
TNT RoughCut
Laurence Lerman
While slight and fairly unassuming considering its subject, the cast is uniformly fine.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
An enjoyable, ultimately inconsequential crowd-pleaser.
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