Cars and Boots

I watched Cars and Kinky Boots back to back, and I was a little surprised how they seem to have exchanged the flaws I would have expected from each film.

I wasn't expecting much from Cars given its lukewarm reception, but I thought it would be fun, if not creative or memorable. Instead it just went on interminably, with a fairly uninspired set of stock characters. Other than maybe the Cinque Cento voiced by Tony Shalhoub who's obsessed with Ferrari and Italian auto racing, none of them stood out. It's really the length and the slow pace, all while stuck on the same dusty street.

Kinky Boots was a lot more enjoyable, but really only because Chiwetel Ejiofor steals the show as Lola. Kinky Boots is the story of a man who inherits his family's ailing shoe factory in the north of England, and tries to save it by turning to a nice market: making shoes for transvestite men. The inspiration is Lola, a boxer turned drag queen whose heels keep snapping off under his weight. Chiwetel Ejiofor is fantastic as Lola, with a fearless vivaciousness that fools everyone into missing his deep vulnerability. A great character, in sexy red thigh boots. Seriously, I don't care who's wearing them, I can't get enough thigh high boots.

My only complaint about Kinky Boots is its use of a very overused female character, the antagonist, materialistic girlfriend who just doesn't understand what our hero is trying to accomplish. Abbie Bartlett on The West Wing played off of this archetype, by giving it a lot more depth and exposing her husband's tendency to try to cast her in that role unfairly. As an obstacle in a romantic subplot, it's just too overused. Frankly both movies had uninspiring romantic plots that gave us no reason to believe in them.

But despite all that, Kinky Boots is still a good movie, but Cars is just boring.