Kinky Boots: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Julian Jarrold’s “Kinky Boots” is about a towering, torch-song-singing drag queen named Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) whose influence on a struggling English shoe manufacturer puts the Hush Puppy, so to speak, on all things conservative.

There will be no flats or sandals where Lola is involved. Proper dress shoes? Forget it. Looking for a clog? Go to Holland. What this queen wants are kinky boots--comfortable, well-made kinky boots--the sort designed to support the weight of a man who dresses to perform as a woman.

The boots must be shocking (“Give me sex!”), yards of patent leather should be employed (“Give me red!”), and a good idea is to have at the calf a little stitched pocket into which one can tuck a whip. You know--for effect. Also--and this probably goes without saying--but anything in faux leopard fur with an 7-inch stiletto heel would be plum, if only to add dice to what Lola sees as a long-overlooked niche--the drag queen, cross-dressing shoe market.

All of this might sound silly, but in the business world, finding your niche is key and it’s hardly always conventional. Many go where the money is, and as far as Lola is concerned, there is money to be had in drag queens who have been cramming their aching feet for too long into women's shoes and boots. Indeed, as Lola might sing in one of her bawdy acts, "Enough is Enough."

Naturally, predictably, circumstances conspire to bring her together with Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton), the young man who inherits his father's respected, nearly bankrupt shoe manufacturing plant, Price & Sons, when the man dies.

Charlie hails from Northamptonshire, which is exactly the sort of uptight, repressed blue-collar town favored in so many of today's popular British comedies, "The Full Monty" standing chief among them.

Since tolerance, understanding and a whole lot of loosening up are what these movies court, Charlie finds in his desperation that Lola is an inspiration. He hires her to design boots, a bold move that wrinkles his bitchy girlfriend's nose, generates the romantic interest of a co-worker (Sarah-Jane Potts), and creates its share of tension among the grim factory workers, none of whom have seen anyone quite like Lola.

Based on the true story of the real Kinky Boot Factory in Northamptonshire, England, "Kinky Boots" steams and sighs, thanks mostly to its terrific performance by the dewy-lipped Ejiofor, who has done nothing in his previous movies (“Dirty Pretty Things,” “Serenity,” “Amistad” and “Four Brothers” among them) to prepare audiences for this.

True, the actor plays Lola as perhaps the most family-friendly drag queen ever--Lola barely has a whiff of sexuality, which is a cop-out. Still, she does have that presence, there is fun to be had in her thirst for a good performance in great shoes, and by the end of the movie, when she’s doing the catwalk down a Milan runway, well, just try not enjoying the show.

Grade: B+