Connie and Carla (2004)
Directed by Michael Lembeck
Written by Nia Vardalos

To see whether you will enjoy Connie and Carla, first take this survey, checking all that apply:

Will you like Connie and Carla?

Actually, I'm not sure anyone could really like this movie even if they fit all of those criteria. Drag humor wasn't particularly inspired even in Shakespeare's day, and it's only gotten worse since Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. This movie banks on the notion that women dressed as male drag queens is both fabulous and funny, but it's so neither, mostly because there's virtually nothing to the movie beyond its concept.

Equally insulting to gay people, drag queens, women, men, and anyone with a functioning brain, Connie and Carla uses the Sister Act approach to send Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette on the lam after they are unwittingly embroiled with "mobsters." They instantly drive from Chicago to LA, where they audition for a drag cabaret act, and wow the crowd with their tired showtune routines. That any gay person, or indeed any person, might actually be fooled by the supposed disguise is preposterous enough; that they might enjoy hearing "Mame" performed six or seven times through the course of the film is even more so.

The story mostly serves as a setup for Vardalos and Collette to perform "Mame" and many other anti-hip showtunes in dinner theater format, and though the result is almost no different from the old Jan Hooks-Nora Dunn "Saturday Night Live" routines, the audience-within-the-film eats it up. The audience-outside-the-film, however, must sit in frustrated agitation as Nia's sub-"Second City" showmanship takes the spotlight.

An unnecessary and awkward subplot involving David Duchovny as a romantic interest for Vardalos certainly doesn't help. Collette is great, but she's underused, with Nia getting all the supposed "good lines."

Hopefully this film will help Nia Vardalos and her slink back into obscurity. She may represent every semi-talented and not-very-attractive person's potential to be made over as a star, but now that we have the point, I think it's safe to send her back to waitressing. She's a walking bachelorette party, and I'm having none of it.

Review by Mothra Stewart