Connie and Carla Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)April 22nd, 2004
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
CONNIE AND CARLA
Rated PG-13, 98 min.
In baseball they used to talk about the sophomore jinx, the letdown that would dog a hot rookie's second year in the big leagues. Well, Nia Vardalos, the unheralded breakout talent who won filmdom's Rookie-of-the-Year honors with My Big Fat Greek Wedding last season, has stumbled badly with her fumbling follow-up effort, Connie and Carla.
For her first post-inspiration try at the big time, Vardalos has siphoned material from one of the greatest of film comedies, Billy Wilder's immortal Some Like It Hot. Does this sound familiar? A couple of small-time musicians witness a gangland shooting. They're spotted by the gangsters, and they have to take it on the lam. They hit upon the gambit of disguising themselves as members of the opposite sex, and join a gender-specific musical group, where they hope to ride out the storm in the bosom of this do-it-yourself witness protection program. One of them falls in love with a person who is really of the right sex for a straight relationship, but it doesn't look that way, so there are complications. And so on.
There's nothing wrong with mining the classics, although it's generally considered sporting to acknowledge the original in the credits. But this kind of wholesale homage comes with built-in risks. There are going to be comparisons to the earlier model, and when the comparisons are all negative, it doesn't do much for the pretender's image.
Connie (Nia Vardalos) and Carla (Toni Collette) are buddies who have been after a showbiz career since childhood. Their dreams of stardom have taken them as far as belting show tunes in an airport lounge at Chicago's O'Hare. My layovers at O'Hare have been too short to discover this lounge. The genial manager of the place (Michael Robards) is menaced by a couple of thugs (Robert John Burke and Boris McGiver), and has time to stow a kilo of cocaine in Carla's purse before being rubbed out. Connie and Carla see the hit, and scream and carry on and call each other by name until the mobsters have no alternative but to give chase.
The girls head for LA, a town they reason is so devoid of culture that nobody would think to look for them there. En route they discover the cocaine, a commodity which turns out to be as awkward for the plot as it is for their health and safety, and it's quickly disposed of. They stumble upon a drag nightclub, and get the idea of disguising themselves as drag queens to make a few bucks and drop off the radar screen of their pursuers.
Where does it all start to break down? Hilarious comedy has been built on less. Nobody demands rigorous logic from this kind of madcap slapstick romantic comedy. But the writing here is weak, and the conceits (women make better drag queens than men; men in drag can't tell the genuine article from the imposter, whichever is which; a second-rate female duo that can't keep customers awake in a Chicago airport has the talent to take the LA drag scene by storm; etcetera, etcetera) don't rise to the level of professional comedy. The direction by Friends veteran Michael Lembeck is so sitcom-oriented that even the talent and charm of Vardalos and Collette can't right this lurching vehicle. Lembeck relies on sight gags that would flunk him out of a Midwestern film school, such as having two characters constantly running into each other and knocking each other down. And the plot strains credulity beyond the limits of comedy: would bad guys who have scoured the country to shut up a couple of murder witnesses then try to kill them off in front of a live audience?
Where Connie and Carla buys itself a measure of redemption is in its musical numbers. Dolled up in sequins and too much makeup (Collette as a drag queen bears a startling resemblance to Jayne Meadows) to pass as men passing as women, the duo unveils a talent that would stun their old O'Hare patrons. The movie audience is helped along in its appreciation by the onscreen onlookers, who stop their idle chatter and turn toward the stage, jaws dropping at the sheer brilliance of it all. But the songs are campy fun, and these gals can belt an Andrew Lloyd Webber tune. There are moments when real humor breaks out in spite of everything, including one where the other queens squeeze Vardalos's breast to try to figure out what she uses for falsies. On the whole, the movie has a genial amateurish quality that would come off well at a fraternity review, especially with a few kegs of beer on hand to lubricate the funny bone.
The cast includes David Duchovny in a romantic subplot as a straight guy who falls for the gender-scrambled Vardalos while trying to reconcile with his drag queen brother, played by Stephen Spinella. Debbie Reynolds drops in for a pointless cameo. Vardalos takes sole responsibility for the screenplay. She's got talent, and she'll survive this stumble. But next time she ought to start from scratch.
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