Movie Review — Connie and Carla

This movie should be subtitled “My Big Fat Greek Drag Show”.  (The movie’s executive producer and one of the stars (Vardalos) are best known for My Big Fat Greek Wedding.)

Last night, Rusty and I went to a free preview showing of the new movie Connie and Carla, hosted by KLSY 92.5 (The New Mix).

The plot, as can be gleaned from the trailer, is that a pair of women (Nia Vardalos and Toni Colette) who do showtunes as (lousy) dinner theatre entertainment witness a murder and end up on the run, taking refuge posing as drag queens in West Hollywood where they are a runaway success.  One of them (Vardalos) falls in love with a (straight) guy (David Duchovny), who of course believes she’s a man posing as a woman.

This movie is hilarious!

(Okay, it’s made even better by the ticket being free, but I was interested in seeing it anyway, and this movie defijavascript:void(0)nitely worth a ticket price.)

What makes this film work is the realization that performers are performers, no matter what gender they are and what costumes they wear.  And that audiences most of all want to see something both fabulous and familiar, which is why drag queens in gaudy outfits singing showtunes works well.

I got a special kick out of this film because of Duchovny’s presence.  I remember him fondly in an earlier role as an FBI agent.  No, not the one where he battled weird phenomena, teamed up with Dana Sculley.  The one where he battled weird phenomena, teamed up with Dale Cooper: Duchovny appeared in Twin Peaks as the cross-dressing agent Denise Bryson.

There is also a Rocky Horror Picture Show bit in this film (another favorite of mine: I’ve played Frank, Brad, Riff Raff, Rocky, Magenta, Columbia, and Betty Hapschatt in casts over the years, and I was also in the chorus in a stage production), which reminded me that every now and then you come across a film which seems like somebody desperately wanted it to become the new Midnight Movie sensation by loading it with bad dialogue and dramatic pauses to encourage the audience to call back to the screen.  This film doesn’t try to do that at all, but it sure has the potential: I can just imagine a cast — mostly in drag, of course — hamming it up, singing and dancing along with all the musical numbers.  To heck with “Sing-Along Sound of Music” (or the “Sing-Along South Pacific” in this film), or even the “Rocky Horror Lion King” I know has been done; this film could do the job.