Review of Connie and Carla (2004) by Shawne ~ — 29 Jul 2004

Funny take on [i]Some Like It Hot[/i], though nowhere in its league (in terms of being a classic movie, that is). [b]Connie & Carla[/b] is a movie with a lot of heart but not much pep--except in its all singing, all dancing extravaganzas... and even then, falls a little short of being genuine and continuously engaging. Don't get me wrong... I don't think C&C is anywhere as bad as some critics have made it out to be. Nia Vardalos has sketched out a neat little story, about childhood friends Connie (Vardalos) and Carla (Toni Collette) turning drag queens when they witness a murder they shouldn't have. Yeah, don't sweat the plot too much--it never seems to occur to either girl to [i]call the police[/i], even once they're in LA. But hey, the [i]point[/i] of the movie is to get Vardalos and Collette into faux drag, and let the laughs follow on from there. Well, if that were the point of the movie, then it would have been quite successful. Vardalos and Collette are amusing together, Collette in particular having quite an impressive set of pipes. Their drag queen backup troupe are also hilarious as secondary characters.

But Vardalos, in trying to shoehorn a message into a film that's glitz, chintz and all kinds of cheese, gets tripped up by it. Yes, it's an admirable idea, to have narrow-minded Jeff (a game but slightly uneasy David Duchovny) coming to terms with his brother Robert's being a drag queen... even as he (all together now) sorta falls for Vardalos even though he thinks she's a man. Oh whatever. If the movie had concentrated on being a ninety-minute cabaret show, it could probably have skirted these 'necessary' moments of human interaction as Jeff becomes humanised etc. etc.

Still, C&C is not without its chuckles. It's a cute little movie, revelling in its own cheesiness. Collette is also a revelation--she's unrelentingly adorable as Carla and lights up the screen when Vardalos isn't making it all about herself and/or Connie. This movie, if nothing else, is a solid argument for Collette's incredible ability to go from dramatic to comic in a matter of seconds. In an extended scene in a car where she blows up at Connie, Collette expresses Carla's anger beautifully ('... and now we're girls playing men playing girls' etc) while stepping just on the right side of hysteria to make it all very, very funny. She really oughta get more movies, dammit!