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STUDIO: Miramax Home Entertainment
MSRP: $29.99
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 107 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Feature commentary w/ dir. and cast
• "The Real Kinky Boots" featurette
• "Journey of a Brogue" featurette
• Deleted scenes w/ optional commentary
The Pitch
“It’s The
Crying Game meets The Devil Wears Prada!”
The Humans
Chiwetel
Ejiofor (Serenity), Joel Edgerton, Sarah-Jane Potts, Jemima Rooper (Hex),
Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead)
The Nutshell
When his
father dies, young Charlie Price is forced into taking on the family business
of manufacturing shoes. But, as it turns out, dear old dad left Charlie a
business on its way to bankruptcy. In order to save his father’s legacy,
Charlie turns to an employee somewhat less conservative than the ancient
cross-dresser with a keen (and controversial) sense of marketing.
I knew a kinky man / Who walked a kinky mile…
The Lowdown
Sexual
discomfort is a spring from which flows an endless supply of humor and drama.
Not in your personal life, of course. I don’t want to hear about that. But in
the world of film, some of our most successful stories have been directly
inspired by the discomfort brought on by messing with gender stereotypes,
sexual roles, and the like. There’s quite a range represented there, from Some
Like It Hot to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and
somewhere in the middle lies Kinky Boots: too shallow to be a
drama, too moribund to be a comedy like its peer Calendar Girls, and too
damn charismatic to discount.
That
charisma arrives in the form of one Chiwetel Ejiofor, better known around these
parts as The Operative in Joss Whedon’s Serenity. Ejiofor plays Lola/Simon,
the somewhat damaged transvestite with a heart of rhinestones. Lola’s psyche is
slightly scarred from his childhood, but Ejiofor plays within that standard of
pop psychology effectively. As a personality, Lola’s colorful life demands
attention amongst the foggy, gray co-workers at the shoe shop; as an actor,
Ejiofor nails the thick-skinned, thinly-veiled emotions of a man insisting the
world take him at his own terms.
"Red, red meat / Stay close to me…at."
The
subplots, of which there are many, all involve Lola’s integration into the
conservative midland city of
have seen around, and his presence stirs up a fair hornet’s nest of hypocrisies
and bigotry, which work both in the realms of humor and drama, depending
entirely on how Lola chooses to react to them. None of these subplots (or,
indeed, the main plot) deal with the relevant issues with much more depth than
a Hallmark card, but they serve their purpose of maintaining interest. I didn’t
get the feeling that the intention was anything deeper than the result. There’s
little to no payoff, other than enjoying Ejiofor in his role.
The
character work turned in by the other actors is handy, but all too rote. The
story of Kinky Boots is one of those which requires sudden shifts in
emotion so that all characters might be kept in little boxes of contention.
It’s like a fencing match: if one character’s emotion changes, his foil’s
compensates, and it begins to feel artificial before too long.
It’s not supposed to come off like that.
Maybe
part of that can be attributed to the critical mass of dramatic devices. In
addition to your sexual identity confrontations, both Lola and the other male
lead have severe daddy issues, both of which have lead to overt analogies to
impotence in the male figures. Neither men feel completely in control of their
own lives, and find themselves incapable of changing them without external
influences. It’s about as subtle as an Enzyte commercial.
My cynicism
manifests when approaching such baldly manipulative vocabulary. I’ve got a
different category for manipulative films which are, simultaneously, honest,
such as Billy Elliot. For most of its running time, Kinky
Boots is concerned with plot, and unconcerned with characters, which
precludes any sort of honesty in the storytelling. However, Ejiofor helps to
bring a balance to the sap. It’s a mediocre feel-good movie with a notable
performance from a innate showman.
"Every day you keep the Northampton Arm Wrestling
Championship title from me more people will die."
The Package
Many of
the cast members, along with director Julian Jarrold, appear on a feature
commentary track. The track is
trivia-light, camaraderie-heavy, as largely-populated tracks tend to be, but
still a good listen and never dull. There are also a couple of deleted scenes
with optional director commentary, to add to the
arguable-value-but-entertaining bonuses.
There are
also two short featurettes, one dedicated to the real life story that inspired
the movie, and one that shows the production process for a good pair of
brogues. That last had me thinking of Reading Rainbow.
6.8 out of 10