“Connie and Carla”

Directed by:

Michael Lembeck

Starring:

Nia Vardalos

Toni Collette

Universal Studios

Rated PG-13

Grade C+

Nia Vardalos who debuted as a screenwriter and lead actress with the charming comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” makes another attempt at comedic prowess with “Connie and Carla.”

Vardalos plays Connie and her sidekick Carla is played by Toni Collette (“The Hours,” “Japanese Story”). The two ladies are an airport song-and-dance entertaining duo with snoring audiences and a Mafioso boss. When they accidentally witness the mobster’s dirty business they have to disappear from Chicago and hide from him. They go to Los Angeles and through a series of events they end up posing as two drag queens at a drag queen nightclub.

As their act becomes increasingly successful they risk the unveiling of their true identities to both the real drag queens who have grown to love them, and the mob boss who is searching the theater circuit nationwide for them.

The two actresses are wonderful together and luckily many of the scenes place them in close proximity to one another. These scenes are the most effective and comedic. Unfortunately, some of the scenes call for the two actresses to do their own thing and these scenes drag … pun intended.

Part of this problem is due to the fact that Vardalos favors her own character Connie and so she includes many more scenes with Connie going solo and developing her own subplots while Carla is underutilized. At one point Carla complains to Connie, “Where have you been? I was shopping all day, alone at the mall.” Sympathy resides with Carla, because as an audience, we too would have preferred that the two stuck together on screen.

The problem with this film is that the best jokes, acting and situations occur during the first half. About half way through the plot nose-dives into a too tidy resolution. When Connie and Carla make their spontaneous escape from Chicago and drive together across country the scenes are fluid, the humor consistent and the story is at its best. Unfortunately, this road trip doesn’t last long and shortly after the characters land in LA and the humor of their self-appointed queen-dom wears thin the movie grows ugly, polluted roots.

The quirky gender-bending film is directed by Michael Lembeck, whose prolific career as a television sitcom director – including “My Two Dads,” “Friends,” “Coach,” and “Ellen,” – was appropriate for this “sitcomish” flick. This is not necessarily a compliment. His television mentality seems to have weakened the structure of this feature-length film. Sitcoms structurally involve setup of conflict and then a fairly quick and tidy resolution. That is why there is generally not much depth to the storylines attempted by comedic TV scripts.

There is simply not enough time in a half-hour, with commercials to boot, to treat a full story arch. There is little time wasted in between act one and act two. Things happen quickly and most of the humor is built upon by exploiting pre-established personality traits of lead characters. In “Connie and Carla” there was way too much time wasted in between developing the conflict and resolving it. What results is an insufficient time to resolve the conflicts that were setup and everything is resolved in the last ten minutes of the film.

Overall, “Connie and Carla” plays with the questionable notion of sexuality and gender that leaves its impression on anyone who has ever been attracted to another human being. Overdone, “after school special” themes such as being true to oneself and loving your body regardless of its shape and size are cleverly disguised here and may even seem fresh to an untrained viewer.

The film deals lightly with Peaches/Robert (Stephen Spinella), a real drag queen’s life style and his relationship with his brother Jeff (David Duchovny) who is desperately trying to understand his brother’s penchant for “playing dress up.” However, the reality of this lifestyle is only dealt with on a surface level and a more explicit call for tolerance from those who might be hesitant to embrace this subculture is needed. We need a real conversation between the drag queen and his straight acting brother, not just an embarrassed stare that eventually turns into an accepting one. What are these characters thinking about?

Part of the difficulty of most films about the drag lifestyle (except perhaps “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) is that the most important themes of identity and loving oneself are overshadowed by the shallow voyeuristic urge of the director (and perhaps the drag queens themselves) to parade the queens across the screen like some sort of parade of bright colors and funky jewelry. Not enough attention is paid to the people underneath the clothes and makeup. Personally, as a female, I don’t need to be reminded that I too can be fabulous in the right clothes and makeup. That’s old news and unwarranted.

What I really want to know is the backstory of these fabulous men. The struggles they have to endure daily and the humanity behind the disguises that women and drag queens alike are on some level subjected to. “Connie and Carla” just barely scratched the surface of the actual thematic potential that drawing a similarity between drag queens and women can accomplish.

That’s one step in the right direction. let’s take another step, shall we?