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I went to see Kinky Boots for two reasons -- it was Saturday night, I needed a feelgood night out and the film starred Chiwetel Ejiofor. I have to report that I was satisfied on both counts. I was mildly amused, leaving the cinema feeling more well-disposed to the world in general and my already very high rating of Chiwetel went up another notch or two. But taking a more distanced view, it is clear that most reviewers have got it right when they see the film as inoffensive, but offering nothing new or exciting. The story is very simple. Mild-mannered Charlie Price needs a new idea to save the family shoe factory from collapse. He hits on the idea of making boots for drag queens and must get a good show together for the Milan Shoe Fair. He got the idea after meeting Lola. Will s/he help make it all work? Having never come across Joel Edgerton (shown above as Charlie opposite Ejiofor as Lola) before, I had no preconceptions. In some ways he plays the role as written very well, but the character is just too dull to spark off Ejiofor's terrific bravura performance. I was also disappointed by the use the film made of its Northampton location. The director (from TV, making a cinema debut) shows the journey from Northampton to London with a shot of a train flashing past the camera to reveal the station name 'Northampton'. There are some nice exteriors of the rather beautiful shoe factory which Edgerton is attempting to save and an equally appealing cobbled square and that's about it apart from a photogenic church nicely framed in CinemaScope (rather wasted as a format here). The result is that several reviews refer to 'Northerners', presumably because they don't know where the town is, and there is no sense of place. This is a shame, given co-writer Tim Firth's rather wonderful use of Colne and Pendle generally in The Preston Front (BBC 1994-7). Whatever their other pluses or minuses, films like The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Billy Elliot etc. all made good use of locations and views -- in some cases what Andrew Higson and others have called "our town from the top of that hill". Northampton is famous for shoes (the football team are called the 'Cobblers') and it must have other distinctive features. In some films, a nondescript suburbia is an appropriate location, but in this film, Northampton itself is a big player. It might be quite an interesting exercise to get students to think about how they would depict their town in a narrative like this. They would probably make more of the 'Northampton boy goes to Milan angle'. The main interest in the film (next to the Northampton) is the audience question -- will it attract the transvestite audience as well as the Northampton residents? A quick glance at the early IMDB user comments and bulletin board postings suggests that it will. Most of these early comments seem to come from people who were extras in the film, but it might be worth checking back later to see if the TV community go with it. Whatever its failings, Kinky Boots did the business in week 1 -- ending up as No 30 in Screen International's International Box Office chart and Chiwetel Ejiofor won't mind he was also No 10 for Four Brothers and No 14 for Serenity as well in the same week – must be some kind of record. Roy Stafford Screening: Keighley Picturehouse 8/10/05 | ||||||||||||||||||
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