Connie and Carla is a good-hearted comedy that missteps by trying to become a moralistic one. When it's fun, especially when affectionately sending up the conventions of both dinner-theater and drag-queen culture, it's joyous and inventive and plenty funny. But when it gets preachy, it's strained and simplistic and pretty much a drag.
The first film from Nia Vardalos since she both wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the surprise blockbuster of 2002, Connie & Carla mines much of the same material. It, too, urges that people be loved and accepted for who they are, not what they look like. It, too, stresses the importance of belonging, of loyalty to one's family (even if the family is not necessarily biological). It, too, finds laughter in the endearing, steering clear of the subversive and celebrating foibles rather than mocking them.
But what worked in a marriage setting doesn't always translate well to one involving mobsters, West Hollywood show bars and the deliberately - even festively - gaudy.
Vardalos, having lost none of the Everywoman charm that helped keep Greek Wedding afloat, plays Connie to Toni Collette's Carla. They're two ebullient, optimistic chanteuses who think they're talented, and that belief has kept them - against the odds and common sense - on the outer, outer edges of stardom. As the film opens, they're playing the passenger lounge at a Midwestern airport, serenading tired fliers with hokey renditions of show tunes (from Cats, South Pacific, Jesus Christ Superstar, all complete with costume changes).
The gals' fortunes change when they witness a mob hit and are forced to flee; looking for a place where no one would look for two aspiring show-toppers, they decide on the country's biggest cultural wasteland - L.A. (the movie is not above cheap shots, most of them quite funny).
So they end up on the streets of Hollywood, jobless and without any prospects - until they stumble on auditions for a drag-queen review at a West Hollywood watering hole. Slathering on the makeup, they adopt guy-dressed-as-gal personas and become instant hits. But will their disguises hold up, and will the mob remain oblivious to their whereabouts?
