Chiwetel Ejiofor

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 Northampton family is used to: a flamboyant cross-dresser with a keen (and controversial) sense of marketing.

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.

The subplots, of which there are many, all involve Lola’s integration into the conservative midland city of Northampton. He’s the first transvestite most 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.

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.

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