PLOT: A staid, established footwear company in the north of England stops making brogues and starts making come-hither boots -- for transvestites -- in order to save the business and the local economy.
Films like The Full Monty or Calendar Girls have already made it clear that when push comes to shove, the British can strip off with the best of them.
In the same basic category -- solving an economic situation through something risque -- we have Kinky Boots, a film about a shoe factory in the north of England that gets rejuvenated by making beautiful boots for transvestites.
Kinky Boots is based on a true story. Charlie (Joel Edgerton) is a feckless guy who cannot wait to get out of Northampton to lead a bigger life in London.
He is dismayed to inherit his family shoe factory back in Northampton, and further dismayed to find that business is far from booming. Charlie spends an afternoon firing people until a young woman at the factory (Sarah-Jane Potts) challenges him to find a better solution.
By chance, Charlie encounters the fabulous Lola; Lola is a nightclub singer. Lola is also a transvestite (Chiwetel Ejiofor, the reason to see this film) and through Lola and her mates, Charlie finds a niche market creating sexy boots big enough and tough enough to be worn by adult men. Who dress as women. Still with us?
Kinky Boots has plenty of subplots about Charlie's grasping fiance vs. the sensible cutie at the factory, and country home vs. city life, and all that, but the centre of the tale is all about tolerance and working together and all those good things. It's all fairly predictable, but it's pleasant.
The story is a bit of drag, you should pardon the expression, whenever Chiwetel Ejiofor is not on the screen. Furious and flamboyant as Lola/Simon, Ejiofor owns the movie, and the picture only feels fully alive when he's present.
The rest of the time it dodders along. Ejiofor's performance involves all the most humorous and all the most heartbreaking moments, and he makes everyone else seem two-dimensional in comparison.
Overall, Kinky Boots is harmless and familiar and you could bring your old granny along to see it.
And it's the sort of civilized outing you well might want to experience before the onslaught of the summer blockbusters.
BOTTOM LINE: This is a slightly more tepid version of The Full Monty and similar British outings that concern seemingly outrageous solutions to economic hardship. It will make you laugh.
(This film is rated PG)
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