The Full Monty is a 1997 British comedy film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer.

The film is set in Sheffield in the North of England during the 1990s, and tells the story of six unemployed men, four of them former steel workers, who decide to form a male striptease act (à la Chippendale dancers) in order to make some money and for the main character, Gaz, to be able to see his son.

Despite being a comedy, the film also touches on serious subjects such as unemployment, fathers' rights, depression, impotence, homosexuality, body image, working class culture and suicide.

Former steelworkers Gary "Gaz" Schofield and Dave Horsfall have resorted to stealing scrap metal from the abandoned mills to sell in order to make some cash, taking Gaz's son Nathan with them for assistance, but a security guard keeps surprising them and locking them inside the steel mill.

Gaz is facing trouble from his former wife Mandy and her boyfriend Barry over child support payments that he has been unable to pay since losing his job.

The first to join the group is Lomper, a security guard at the steel mill where Dave and Gaz once worked, whose suicide attempt they interrupt.

Looking for more recruits, the four men hold an open audition and settle on Horse, an older man who is nevertheless a good dancer, and Guy, who can't dance at all but proves to be unusually well-endowed.

When they are greeted by two local women while putting up posters for the show, Gaz boasts that they are better than the real Chippendales because they go "the full monty".

Initially Dave still refuses, but regains his confidence after encouragement from his wife, Jean, and joins the rest of the group minutes before they go on stage.

Gaz refuses to do the act because there are men in the audience (including the police officers who watched the footage of the security camera's recording of them earlier), when the posters were supposed to say it was for women only.

[4] The famous "Hot Stuff" scene, in which the characters dance in the queue at the Jobcentre,[5] was originally going to be cut from the final production as it was considered "too unrealistic".

However, the film went virtually unnoticed until the Coulthards were approached about some of the footage being included in The Full Monty for a payment of £400, which they accepted.

The phrase, whose origin is obscure (a possible meaning relates to a full 3-piece suit by the then popular high street tailor Montague Burton), gained a renewed prominence in British culture following the film.

Other dialect words are used in the film; some such as nesh (meaning a person unusually susceptible to cold) are widespread across the North Midlands region.

Jennel (an alley) is local to Sheffield:[11] it is a variation on the word "ginnel", which is in full versions of the Oxford English Dictionary and is used in many parts of England.

The funniest moments are frequently the most subtle, like when five of the strippers, standing in the dole line, find themselves unable to resist dancing in place when Donna Summers's "Hot Stuff" comes on the radio.

There's surprisingly little raunch, in part because the film can't stop thinking of women as enemies of a sort (at least Monty is less offensive than Brassed Off in that department).

The consensus reads, "Cheeky and infectiously good-natured, The Full Monty bares its big beating heart with a sly dose of ribald comedy.

In France, it opened at the same time as The Lost World: Jurassic Park and recorded a per screen average of $16,699 compared to the former's $19,133, finishing in third place for the week.

[30] New Zealand playwrights Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair filed a £180 million lawsuit against the producers of The Full Monty in 1998.

[32][33] Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair created a website containing their play in response to statements from the producers of The Full Monty that claimed the two productions were not alike.

The underlying rights were attributed to co-producer, Paul Bucknor, and the lawsuit was settled out of court; as part of the agreement, the website containing Ladies Night was shut down.

[34] Anne Dudley's Oscar for Best Score was a surprise, and some critics felt undeserved, inasmuch as the award is for original music and most of the film's memorable moments had jukebox favourites playing.

[38] Bob Strauss called the Oscar "well-deserved",[39] while Pauline Reay felt Dudley's underscore complemented the familiar hits.

[50] It aired on 15 June 2017 and starred Alexander Armstrong, Ashley Banjo, Danny John-Jules, Dominic Littlewood, Elliott Wright, Harry Judd, Mark Foster, Matthew Wolfenden and Wayne Sleep.