KINKY BOOTS - DVD review

The British seem to have a knack for these things. They're able to produce quirky, little, humorous films based on material of questionable taste and have them all come out as respectable as dinner at Denny's. The 2005 release "Kinky Boots," about cross-dressing, is a good example, following in the tradition of such popular British imports as "The Full Monty," about male strippers, and "Calendar Girls," about nude pictures.

"Kinky Boots" is not quite in the same league as "The Full Monty," though, because it can't always make up its mind exactly what it wants to be. The film alternates between warm and fuzzy and serious and thematic, hoping to evoke a laugh here, a tear there, and a thought-provoking message in between. Trying to be too many things, it winds up never quite keeping our interest for its entire 107-minute running time. So, there are stretches that one may find irresistible and stretches that may have one reaching for the fast-forward button.

Just as the filmmakers have a hard time focusing their story on a single tone, so do they struggle to settle down to a single main character. Ostensibly, the major character is Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton, who looks like a young Albert Finney), a fellow who inherits his father's shoe factory when his old man dies. But he is clearly upstaged throughout the film by Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a cross-dressing nightclub singer. Ultimately, the movie is about both of them, but it is not a long enough film to do either of them much justice.

Like so many of the live-action features Buena Vista has distributed lately, "Kinky Boots" was inspired by a true story. If you watch the accompanying featurette on the actual Kinky Boots factory, you'll see that the filmmakers took quite a few liberties with the details. Still, that's neither here nor there; it's the resultant movie that matters. When Charlie takes over the shoe factory, he's horrified to learn that the company is in financial ruin. Price & Sons is an old-fashioned, ultraconservative shoe manufacturer that makes a high-class men's product that will last a lifetime. And that's the problem; stores don't want something that costs a lot of money, and they certainly don't want something that will last. They could care less about craftsmanship anymore; they want something cheap that will wear out in a few years, so customers will have to come back and buy more. Charlie has no idea what to do except to start laying off employees and possibly shut down the business.

That's when two things happen: One of the people he fires, Lauren (Sarah-Jane Potts), suggests he change the product, make something new; and then he meets Lola, a flamboyant drag queen with a passion for shoes. Could there be, Charlie wonders, a niche market for women's shoes for men? Could he save the factory by producing really well-made, long-lasting boots for cross-dressing males?

The plot goes from there and in several more directions. We see Charlie's relationship with his cold-as-ice fiancée, Nicola (Jemima Rooper), go downhill; we see him build a business relationship with Lola, hiring him as an insider consultant on the matter of fancy boots; we see him struggle to keep his factory operating; we see him and everybody else try to get their new products recognized internationally at a Milan fashion show; and we see him in a new, fledgling romance.

Concurrently, we see the clash of cultures and personalities between the freewheeling Lola from London and ultraconservative Charlie and his employees from Southampton. I've never been to these cities, but the film would lead us to believe that London still swings and Southampton...doesn't. However, the filmmakers give over much of the film to obvious stereotyping and far-fetched reactions, like Charlie trying to smuggle Lola, a very large black man dressed as a woman, into the factory so as not to offend the sensibilities of the staid employees, or the reactions of the macho male employees to somebody as different as Lola.

Part of the problem with this, though, is that the filmmakers try to make the movie appeal to everybody equally and offend no one. Therefore, while Lola cross-dresses, the script stays completely clear of his actual sexual preferences. We assume that Lola is gay, but, amazingly, it simply never comes up in the movie. It seems an unnecessary omission in this day and age, but the filmmakers are taking no chances.

Nor does the film take any other real chances. It is cute and it made me smile more than once, but it only just barely touches on serious human relationships, tolerances for others, or fitting in. The characters are sweet and do grow on one, but they never really develop too far beyond what we would expect of them from the outset. In fact, there isn't much that happens in the film that we could not predict well in advance, including the big, "Rocky" style ups and downs of the finish.

Nevertheless, as with so many British productions, it's the acting that carries the day, and here the ensemble cast do a fine job making us care about people who on the surface would appear to be merely cardboard, formulaic, two-dimensional personalities. Edgerton, Ejiofor, Potts, and the rest create characters we come to care about, mostly through their own innate acting skills and charm, rather than through a script that gives them much to flesh out.

"Kinky Boots" doesn't really have much kink in its boots as it aims steadfastly for a PG-13 rating, but it is attractive and gentle and will give no offense. Maybe it was a little offense I missed most.

Video:
The disc very generously offers the picture in a widescreen size, whose 2.40:1 theatrical dimensions here measure an anamorphic ratio about 2.23:1 across my television. However, as nice as that is, the picture itself is very slightly blurred and even murky in some scenes. Faces, especially, are often too dark. The color scheme is partly to blame, done up as it is in dark pastels. Nevertheless, the screen is quite clean, and the look of the film is probably not much different from how it appeared in a motion-picture theater.

Audio:
It's hard to fault or compliment the sound on much of anything. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio does its job with commendable restraint but doesn't do enough for a reviewer to say much about it, either. The music in the nightclub scenes opens up and blooms nicely in the surrounds, and the front channels provide a wide stereo spread, with good dynamics and adequate bass, meaning it is never too overbearing. As usual in modern films, dialogue seems anchored out in the center channel, but it's clear and natural, so one can hardly complain.

Extras:
There is a decent selection of bonus items accompanying this little movie, some of which you will want at least to sample if you should obtain the disc. Things begin with a featurette, "The Real Kinky Boots Factory," a fourteen-minute look at the real-life factory that inspired the movie. Next, there are four deleted scenes with optional director commentary, totalling about seven minutes in all and presented in non-anamorphic widescreen. After that is an audio commentary by director Julian Jarrold and stars Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sarah-Jane Potts, wherein the filmmakers seem just as warm and cordial as the movie itself. Finally, there is "Journey of a Brogue," about a minute showing us how a shoe factory makes a shoe. I wasn't sure about that one. There are also a few trailers at start-up only; twelve scene selections and a chapter insert; English and French spoken languages; and French subtitles, with English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
"Kinky Boots" is so loveable and its characters so charming, it may have you forgetting how much of it is firmly rooted in stereotype and cliché. It tries so obviously to be heartwarming, one sometimes feels manipulated; then, just when that happens, the story and the characters pull you back in with their obvious heart and warmth. Yes, the movie could have been less conventional and more daring, but that is not what the filmmakers were after. I think they got exactly what they wanted, and if parts of the film don't work for everybody, well, that doesn't make it much different from most other films.