Connie and Carla is a new film written by Nia Vardalos, the bubbly, likable performer responsible for the surprise mammoth hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Following that obvious but hard to resist charmer, Vardalos opted to turn My Big Fat Greek Wedding into a television sitcom. Unfortunately for her, the series was met with much criticism and following a strong debut, the show quickly slipped in the ratings.

So after a little hiatus, Vardalos returns with Connie and Carla, a well intentioned but clumsily written film that brought to mind similar and
superior works like Tootsie and Victor Victoria.

Connie and Carla features Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette as the title characters, life long friends and budding show tune singers who flee their
hometown when they are witness to a shady incident involving their boss (a scenario we've seen thousands of times in movies, Sister Act, for one). So it's off to Hollywood where they quickly find the perfect job; that of drag queen
lounge singers. Needless to say, holding down such a job requires major deception on their part, so our heroines pretend to be men pretending to be women, which allows them safe refuge as well as their big chance to act out
their dreams. And not surprisingly, their lives become all-the-more complicated as they try to hide this big secret from everyone including Connie's new crush (played by David Duchovny).

Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla is very simple but the charm factor that was so prominent in that picture comes in much smaller doses here. This movie is also much harder to swallow. I for one never bought Connie and Carla as men, and I had a hard time believing that the characters in their lives would either. That presented a major problem. Of course I probably could have forgiven the movie for this had the writing been stronger, alas
Connie and Carla is pretty straight forward and incredibly predictable. And how about all the obvious stereotyping. I mean really, how many times do we have to hear a Barbra Streisand reference in a movie about homosexuals. It's
a tired joke and if I were gay I would have been annoyed by it.

Both leads here are very likable but of the "Laverne and Shirley" like team, Toni Collette (an actress I've adored since her brilliant work in Muriel's Wedding) is the brightest and I found it quite disheartening that she just sort of disappears midway through this picture so that more attention can be paid to the inevitable romance between Vardalos and Duchovny. I must say though, that I do enjoy seeing Duchovny in this type of role. He was so
underrated in the little seen gem Return to Me, and he brings a similar kind of charm to this role, though this part isn't nearly as developed. Stephen Spinella is also a standout as Duchovny's gay brother. There re-connection
after not having seen each other for several years is cliched to say the least (as written) but I like the way these two actors play out this
familiar scenario. On a final acting note, I loved the deadpan Ian Gomez as Hollywood club owner Stanley. His line delivery is priceless and I wish there would have been more of him in Connie and Carla.

Nia Vardalos is clearly trying to inject Connie and Carla with the same sort of sweet, breezy quality that made My Big Fat Greek Wedding work so surprisingly well, but it never really comes together. Each comical situation is goofier than the previous one, and it's capped off by a big-star walk-on that seemed all too pretentious. And, of course, there is that
pivotal moment in which our central characters reveal their true identities. At least in Connie and Carla this moment is fairly swift and not a slapstick slice of overload (see Mrs. Doubtfire).

Connie and Carla is messy and sporadic, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't smile a couple of times. And if laughter is any indication of a film's worth, the audience I saw it with sure loved it.