The Full Monty (1997)

Peter Cattaneo's comedy about laid-off Sheffield steelworkers who put on a strip show became the decade's great crowd-pleaser and traveled the world. Robert Carlyle leads as Gaz, with Tom Wilkinson and Mark Addy in a superb ensemble written by Simon Beaufoy. The scene in the line at the unemployment office, the "dole queue" in British slang, where the men cannot help moving to Hot Stuff is still one of the best gags in British comedy. Under the laughs the film is frank about unemployment, pride and fatherhood, which is why it has dated far less than many lighter hits of the period. Anne Dudley's score won the Oscar for original musical or comedy score.