British Drag Queen Comedy a Drag
With a tailor-made title for the fetish demographic, Kinky Boots abandons a solid plot about a struggling shoe factory in favor of a drag-queen-as-fairy-godmother tale.
The recipient of the glitter is a ho-hum character named Charlie (Joel Edgerton, Luke's Uncle Owen in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and the drag queen is horribly miscast. Portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, sounding—and, unfortunately for a drag queen, looking—more like Barry White than Diana Ross, the manliness draws attention to the character's deficiency as a drag queen. Not since The Birdcage's transgendered Gene Hackman has drag been such a drag.
Ejiofor works as much pizzazz as he can into Simon/ Lola, alternating between tender and over the top but the performance scenes—pegged to a lackluster soundtrack—are painful to watch. After a set-up with Simon as a young child, adult Lola is soon glimpsed running away from a group of London brutes—only to be rescued by tipsy Charlie, who recently inherited his father's practically worthless shoe factory in Northampton, stumbling out of a pub.
From there, it isn't hard to figure how the two might benefit one another, and it's the most interesting part of the picture, which is apparently based on a true story. After Lola breaks a heel, Charlie gets it in his head to make high-heeled shoes for men who dress up as women, the ultimate niche market. Lola trudges north to show him how it's done and the blue collar blokes don't exactly take kindly to a Donna Summer lookalike with bulging biceps.
But work is work, so they get down to business, stitching, stamping and operating machinery, to get the factory back in the business of crafting quality shoes. The goal to make a splash at an Italian fashion show consumes the workers, with Lola fueling the fire in a face-saving gesture, and Kinky Boots is enjoyable when it's about making money.
As the goal to create top-notch boots takes on a life of its own, Charlie's shrewish wife has other designs in mind, while a pixyish factory worker more or less shows Charlie what a woman wants in a man and Lola struts around town in and out of drag scaring the bejesus out of everyone in her path. Somewhere in here is a muddled theme about what it takes to be a man these days, which might have made a point, but Kinky Boots loses it, popping off out of character, straying far from purpose and tacking on a mismatched finale that asks for much more than it has earned.
The recipient of the glitter is a ho-hum character named Charlie (Joel Edgerton, Luke's Uncle Owen in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and the drag queen is horribly miscast. Portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, sounding—and, unfortunately for a drag queen, looking—more like Barry White than Diana Ross, the manliness draws attention to the character's deficiency as a drag queen. Not since The Birdcage's transgendered Gene Hackman has drag been such a drag.
Ejiofor works as much pizzazz as he can into Simon/ Lola, alternating between tender and over the top but the performance scenes—pegged to a lackluster soundtrack—are painful to watch. After a set-up with Simon as a young child, adult Lola is soon glimpsed running away from a group of London brutes—only to be rescued by tipsy Charlie, who recently inherited his father's practically worthless shoe factory in Northampton, stumbling out of a pub.
From there, it isn't hard to figure how the two might benefit one another, and it's the most interesting part of the picture, which is apparently based on a true story. After Lola breaks a heel, Charlie gets it in his head to make high-heeled shoes for men who dress up as women, the ultimate niche market. Lola trudges north to show him how it's done and the blue collar blokes don't exactly take kindly to a Donna Summer lookalike with bulging biceps.
But work is work, so they get down to business, stitching, stamping and operating machinery, to get the factory back in the business of crafting quality shoes. The goal to make a splash at an Italian fashion show consumes the workers, with Lola fueling the fire in a face-saving gesture, and Kinky Boots is enjoyable when it's about making money.
As the goal to create top-notch boots takes on a life of its own, Charlie's shrewish wife has other designs in mind, while a pixyish factory worker more or less shows Charlie what a woman wants in a man and Lola struts around town in and out of drag scaring the bejesus out of everyone in her path. Somewhere in here is a muddled theme about what it takes to be a man these days, which might have made a point, but Kinky Boots loses it, popping off out of character, straying far from purpose and tacking on a mismatched finale that asks for much more than it has earned.
