Kinky Boots film review

certificate_12A

KINKY BOOTS

Made by the same team that brought us Calendar Girls, Kinky Boots is another attempt to cash in on the formula that made their previous film - as well as its own predecessor The Full Monty - so successful. Take a bunch of Brits in a crisis (usually economic) and find some post-Carry On humour as they devise a way out of it, normally involving the removal of clothes. This time out it's the leather boot market, although the recipe has begun to show its age: while The Full Monty was a great film and Calendar Girls a good one, Kinky Boots is simply ordinary at best.

This is a shame as its heart is in the right place and all of the performers give their best. But they are let down by a contrived script that we've unfortunately seen too many times before, and has the distinct feeling of being something that would be better suited to television. It ticks all the correct boxes but never engages the audience enough, and while it does deliver some laughs, there are long portions when it fails to muster a giggle.

Joel Edgerton stars as Charlie Price, and sports the most unconvincing Midlands accent in some time as well as a series of costumes that are undoubtedly supposed to recall memories of Billy Liar. Charlie's problems begin when he inherits his late father's shoe factory and discovers that the old man has been pretending everything is fine when the reality is he hasn't sold many pairs since Hush Puppies hit the high street. With a chirpy and hard-working factory floor to keep in bitter and ciggies, Charlie has to come up with a new business plan.

This arrives in the unlikely form of Lola (whom Charlie encounters in a somewhat unbelievable manner), a cross-dressing male played with relish by Chiwetel Ejiofor. Lola is a singer in a nightclub and when she takes Charlie there one night a lightbulb is switched on - the gap in the market his father's company needs to exploit is for transvestites. Girls' shoes simply can't take the weight of a burly fifteen-stone man in a miniskirt.

With Lola on board as designer, the inevitable ensues and the film becomes a culture clash as the brassy chanteuse from Soho takes on the reluctant, and in some cases, prejudiced, workforce. Some backstory involving Charlie's plans to get married as well as Lola's own situation tries to fill out a fairly lightweight story.