Ejiofor plays Simon, aka Lola, a flamboyant drag queen who gets to sing show tunes, issue snappy putdowns, and look fabulous. (He is not, he explains, a transvestite, because while drag queens look good in a dress, trannies "look like Boris Yeltsin in lipstick.") Lola is also nursing some deep personal scars from being disowned by his father, who died of lung cancer without reconciliation ("It's ironic, really -- fags got him in the end!"), and does shots of vodka every night for an artificial boost. Whether or not Lola is gay is never really addressed; he makes a remark about drag queens not necessarily being homosexual, but there are no lovers to be seen, and he never expresses interest in any male or female in sight. Perhaps denying the erotic aspect and merely treating drag as dress-up could be seen as a stealthy move toward pushing tolerance, but more likely it was done to keep the rating down.
Lola serves as an unlikely muse for the film's considerably more boring main character, Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton, the young Uncle Owen from the Star Wars prequels), heir to a shoe factory that's in much deeper trouble than his late father let on. It's on a trip to London in an attempt to unload 200 boxes of unsold shoes at cost that Charlie comes upon Lola being harassed by street thugs. Attempting to help, he gets smashed in the face instead by Lola's shoe -- which appears to be deliberate, yet Lola helps him recover anyway. During the course of Charlie's introduction to the wonderful world of drag revues, he notices that the heels on Lola's shoes keep breaking. Later, at the urging of his love interest, Lauren (Sarah-Jane Potts), he is struck with an idea for niche-marketing -- shoes made for men who like to dress as women.
It's the familiar Full Monty formula: Working-class Britain plus quirkiness plus mildly risqué comic element equals box office. Problem is, The Full Monty worked because it wasn't formulaic at the time. Kinky Boots, on the other hand, is going through the motions, and it feels as if all the actors know it . . . save Ejiofor, who obviously took on the role for the challenge -- and he rises to it. It's difficult to tell whether Lola is the only interesting character because he's written that way or because the actor is so clearly in a class above the rest. Whatever the case, the movie loses its energy when it focuses on Charlie, who, like another recent cinematic Charlie who inherited a wondrous factory, is an incredibly passive protagonist who hardly does anything. Every decision made by Charlie is the result of someone badgering him into it; even after he supposedly figures out what he wants, it's because Lauren and Lola forced him to realize it and act accordingly.
Well, okay . . . There is one other actor who brings a bit of his own energy to things -- Shaun of the Dead's Nick Frost as the beer-bellied manly man Don, who's initially attracted to Lola, then repulsed, then eventually congenial again. Their arm-wrestling scene is a standout, and even though the outcome is somewhat predictable, the dialogue that resolves it is not. There's only one homophobic joke in the film; mostly it mines humor from the matter-of-fact way in which small-town people treat Lola, surprising him with their casualness.
We're told that the Kinky Boots Factory really does exist, and it might've been more interesting to see a documentary on the subject. Or perhaps a U.K. sitcom, with Lola and Don as mismatched roommates. As a movie, Kinky Boots is strictly a vehicle for Ejiofor, another clip for that inevitable Oscar highlight reel.
