KINKY BOOTS takes Ejiofor from "actor of note" status to "can do no wrong" status, right there with Emma Thompson, Toni Collette, and Edward Everett Horton. He takes a pleasant and occasionally funny story of plucky entrepreneurship and infuses it with energy and warmth.
KINKY BOOTS tells the story of a Northampton shoe factory that's in big trouble. Joel Edgerton plays a young man who has just inherited the venerable institution, only to discover that it's on the verge of bankruptcy. When a drag queen called Lola (Ejiofor) inspires him to go into the 'women's boots for men' business, he bets the factory on the idea. Various plots and subplots get resolved, some people find happiness, etc., and the movie rocks along pleasantly for an hour and a half. Without Ejiofor, it'd be a perfectly nice movie, the kind of thing that'd appeal to the CALENDAR GIRLS crowd (and I mean that in a good way). With Ejiofor, however, it's fabulous.
Ejiofor's can make Lola simultaneously confident and fragile, happy and heartbroken, joyous and deeply pained. He's a lousy singer and not much of a dancer, but he carries his nightclub numbers with such gusto and joy that we can't help but delight in them. He so thoroughly embodies his character that the guest with whom we saw it couldn't imagine him in any other kind of role - she thought Ejiofor had been discovered in SoHo's club scene. The guy is just plain fun to watch, as he was in MELINDA AND MELINDA, SERENITY, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, and INSIDE MAN.
I can't wait to see what he does next.
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