Kinky Boots

The latest in a spate of noodge-noodge British dramadies, this film wants to be sexy and sophisticated, but clomps around like a little girl playing dress-up.

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   In this winter’s Mrs. Henderson Presents, the central joke was the notion that an upper-class British widow would use sex to sell tickets to a West End London theater. When Mrs. Henderson suggests that she and her manager put naked girls on the stage, he protests. They couldn’t possibly, he sputters. "Why not?" she asks. "Because we’re English!" he says.
   That line might have earned its laugh 35 years ago, when No Sex Please, We’re British was playing in a still prudish London, but it sounds pretty silly in the age of Ali G. Then again, you can’t expect to shake off centuries of repression without an awkward coming-out phase.
   Maybe that explains the spate of noodge-noodge British dramadies that started with The Full Monty and continued through Mrs. Henderson and Calendar Girls. Like so many little girls clomping around in Mommy’s high heels, these movies want to be sexy and sophisticated, but they just can’t pull it off.
   The latest of these is Kinky Boots, which shares a screenwriter and production team with Calendar Girls and was, like the other three, "inspired by a true story." But if the others were kids playing dress-up, this one’s a baby beauty queen, too carefully programmed and groomed to let the slightest hint of spontaneity or genuine emotion leak through. Everything in this charmless contrivance feels as premeditated as JonBenet Ramsey’s smile, starting with the plot twists you see coming from miles away.
   The boots of the title are made in a family-owned shoe factory whose reluctant heir, Charlie Price (played by the anemic Joel Edgerton), takes it over just as it starts to spiral toward bankruptcy. To save the factory — and the jobs of its "colorful" employees — Charlie targets a niche market. Instead of making sensible, conservative men’s shoes, he starts churning out thigh-high, stiletto-heeled boots made, complete with steel reinforcements, for cross-dressing men.
   Charlie’s inspiration — and his designer — is a drag queen-with-a-heart-of-gold named Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Much is made of how shocking the people in the factory town of Northampton find Soho gal Lola when she first strides into their lives, but is there ever the slightest doubt that she’ll win them all over? Of course she’ll charm even Don (Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead’s cheerfully deadbeat roommate), the factory’s token overcompensating macho blowhard. And naturally she’ll prove that she’s a better man than Don by winning that arm wrestling match he insists on.
   There’s also a subplot involving Charlie’s gradual detachment from his fiancée, Nicola (Jemima Rooper), a material girl (hiss!) who wants him to sell the factory (boo!). Running parallel to that is Charlie’s growing attachment to Lauren (Sara Jane Potts), a perky employee who helps him produce his flashy footwear. Intimate two-shots and lingering looks make it clear from the start that these two will end up together — which is probably for the best, since their courtship is so underdeveloped you might not otherwise know it was happening.
   Ejiofor, who has a leading man’s quiet charisma, sensitivity and strength, got the role of a lifetime in Dirty Pretty Things and has been sorely underused in every movie he’s been in since. This one’s no exception, though he’s on the screen more than anyone else except Edgerton.
   His Lola is by far the best and most vibrant thing in Kinky Boots, yet even she lacks fire. He captures Lola’s star power, her underlying decency, and her strength of character. But, except in one scene where he dances to a James Brown song, Ejiofor just can’t make her sexy. Even the musical numbers she sings at her Soho club have a by-the-numbers feel. His Lola exudes a gleefully carnivorous self-confidence, but she seems to have no sexual appetite. She’s like an oversized sex doll, all sex without being at all sexual.
   Maybe this movie’s airless, medicinal odor comes from the canned messages of tolerance that keep getting doled out, or maybe it’s the sterility of stale devices that get used over and over, when once would be too much. Things like the mike in Charlie’s office that’s always being clicked on by mistake at just the right time to inform someone of something they needed to know.
   If you’re in the mood for a moving, life-affirming movie about what Lola calls "ladies, gentlemen, and those who are yet to make up your minds," skip Kinky Boots. Rent Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or maybe The Crying Game.
Rated PG-13. Contains thematic material involving sexuality, and language.