STINKY BOOTS

Kinky Boots
Grade: C

The new British comedy Kinky Boots desperately wants to take you for a walk on the wild side. But these boots are not made for walking. Well, not to anyplace interesting, anyway.
Granted there’s some fun cross-dressing action in a queer cabaret and on a fashion runway, and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) delivers a playful and soulful performance as a drag queen named Lola. But these good bits are squandered by a script that lacks the wit and insight that made drag queen classics like Torch Song Trilogy and Some Like It Hot so memorable.
In the tradition of The Fully Monty and Calendar Girls, this is a story about quaint British folk who go out on a naughty limb to make money. Like Calendar Girls, it’s based on real events.
Charlie Price is a emotionally reserved young man who plans to move to London with his fiancée. His father dies, however, leaving him in charge of a struggling shoe factory in a drab industrial town. The dismal situation starts looking up when Charlie meets a sassy drag queen (Ejiofor) who inspires him to manufacture outrageous stiletto-heeled boots that are strong enough to support big and brawny male transvestites. This just may be the niche market that will save the factory.
Much of the predictable plot centers on the conflict between Lola and Charlie, who’s embarrassed to be seen in public with a drag queen. Charlie is a well-mannered and generally kind bloke, but like some of his piggish male employees he believes that one can’t possibly be a real man and dress in a frock at the same time.
A series of interminable and awkwardly staged scenes proves – surprise, surprise- that Lola has more masculinity in her heavily glossed lips than Charlie has in his whole uptight body.
Movies about transvestite footwear don’t strut our way everyday. It’s a shame that director Julian Jarrold and company couldn’t find a way to convert this bizarre and endearing premise into a rollicking good time.