Some Like It Lukewarm
Add Connie and Carla to the list of mediocre drag comedies. An avalanche of clichés, characters and Michael Lembeck's uneven direction buries good performances, scenes and musical numbers. Nia Vardalos, who wrote and starred in the blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is writer and star again. Teamed once more with Greek producer Rita Wilson, who discovered Vardalos, Connie and Carla is no reason they shouldn't keep making movies.
Vardalos is appealing as Connie, half of a dinner theater duo on the lam masquerading as a couple of drag queens. She has chutzpah, and she steals the spotlight on stage. Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding, The Sixth Sense) hams it up as Connie's dumber counterpart Carla, and she's fine as long as she's singing. Thanks to Ruth Myers's costume design and garish make-up by Connie Parker and Charles Porlier, they are convincing as men dressed as women, minus the Adam's apples.
Like Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as horsy female impersonators in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot, Connie and Carla escape a mobster whose crime they inadvertently witness, and they hide out in a musical revue. Similarities to Wilder's masterpiece end there.
Whenever the pair brings up the lights—and their drag renditions of musical tunes are grand—Lembeck stops the show cold and cuts to trite subplots involving beauty, brotherhood and would-be broads. The main thread about pursuing one's top goal dissipates in the porously slow plot. Broadway harmonies, including a few howlers from Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret and Funny Girl, keep Connie and Carla on its toes.
Director Lembeck's television career, from playing Max on One Day at a Time to his directing on Friends, is evident in choppy scene after scene, especially the truncated musical numbers. Lacking Some Like It Hot's wit and Victor/Victoria's theatrical farce, Connie and Carla are more like Laverne and Shirley.
Like Greek Wedding, Vardalos's best ideas are unfulfilled. Connie's moneymaking personality adds a dollar sign sparkle to her act—and to the repressed club owner's profits—and a gay icon's cameo fits nicely. David Duchovny's straight man, who sends Connie falling big hair over clunky heels, is almost debonair in a difficult role. Stephen Spinella strikes the right combination of weary and real as his drag queen brother. Still, too many mobsters, queens and subplots leave little time for a bond between Connie and Carla, let alone between Connie and Duchovny as her suitor, and Connie and Carla wind up without much to sing about.
Vardalos is appealing as Connie, half of a dinner theater duo on the lam masquerading as a couple of drag queens. She has chutzpah, and she steals the spotlight on stage. Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding, The Sixth Sense) hams it up as Connie's dumber counterpart Carla, and she's fine as long as she's singing. Thanks to Ruth Myers's costume design and garish make-up by Connie Parker and Charles Porlier, they are convincing as men dressed as women, minus the Adam's apples.
Like Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as horsy female impersonators in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot, Connie and Carla escape a mobster whose crime they inadvertently witness, and they hide out in a musical revue. Similarities to Wilder's masterpiece end there.
Whenever the pair brings up the lights—and their drag renditions of musical tunes are grand—Lembeck stops the show cold and cuts to trite subplots involving beauty, brotherhood and would-be broads. The main thread about pursuing one's top goal dissipates in the porously slow plot. Broadway harmonies, including a few howlers from Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret and Funny Girl, keep Connie and Carla on its toes.
Director Lembeck's television career, from playing Max on One Day at a Time to his directing on Friends, is evident in choppy scene after scene, especially the truncated musical numbers. Lacking Some Like It Hot's wit and Victor/Victoria's theatrical farce, Connie and Carla are more like Laverne and Shirley.
Like Greek Wedding, Vardalos's best ideas are unfulfilled. Connie's moneymaking personality adds a dollar sign sparkle to her act—and to the repressed club owner's profits—and a gay icon's cameo fits nicely. David Duchovny's straight man, who sends Connie falling big hair over clunky heels, is almost debonair in a difficult role. Stephen Spinella strikes the right combination of weary and real as his drag queen brother. Still, too many mobsters, queens and subplots leave little time for a bond between Connie and Carla, let alone between Connie and Duchovny as her suitor, and Connie and Carla wind up without much to sing about.
