REVIEW 'Connie and Carla' stirs in plots from other films for bland mix

To save their lives, two waitresses are forced to enter the world of drag queens.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
As Chicago cocktail waitresses who disguise themselves as drag queens to elude the clutches of an evil drug kingpin, Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette are no more convincing as women-passing-as-men-passing-as-women than Julie Andrews was in "Victor/Victoria."
But if Andrews was blessed with first-rate material, a dream supporting cast (including Robert Preston, James Garner and Lesley Ann Warren), and director Blake Edwards' crackerjack comic timing, Vardalos (who also scripted) and Collette are pretty much left to their own devices.
True, "Connie and Carla," a bland, sitcommy puree of Andrews' 1982 hit and "Some Like It Hot" (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon masquerade as women to elude mobsters), could have been a whole lot more offensive than it is. Of course, what were you expecting from the writer-star of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? A Margaret Cho concert film? If only.
Odd choice
The curiously dated "C & amp;C" seems like an odd choice by Vardalos as her big-screen follow-up to "Greek Wedding." (We'll politely overlook her ill-fated CBS "Wedding" spinoff, "My Big Fat Greek Family.")
After all, the whole drag thing was pass & eacute; well before Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes donned frilly women's garments for 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" (itself a ripoff of '94 arthouse crossover hit "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert").
Vardalos and Collette play, naturally, Connie and Carla, two Chi-town show business hopefuls whose lives take an, er, unusual turn after they witness their boss getting iced by hoodlums Rudy (Robert John Burke) and Tibor (Boris McGiver).
On the lam from the mob, the gals wind up in Los Angeles, where, thanks to layers upon layers of makeup and pouffy wigs, they pass themselves off as drag queens. Voila! Quicker than you can say "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Connie and Carla become the toast of the town.
(Considering their spirited, if adequate-at-best renditions of tunes from such Broadway staples as "A Chorus Line" and "Funny Girl," that's a leap of faith few moviegoers will be willing to make.)
What happens next
During their down-time, the gals make nice with the real drag queens in their apartment building, even finessing a reconciliation between cross-dresser Robert a k a Peaches (Stephen Spinella) and his straight brother (good sport David Duchovny, a long way from "The X-Files").
When Rudy gets wise to their new address thanks to information supplied by Connie and Carla's dim-bulb ex-boyfriends, Al (Nick Sandow) and Mikey (Dash Mihok), he quickly hightails it out west.
Everything builds to a predictable comic showdown, replete with a cameo by Tinseltown legend Debbie Reynolds, on the opening night of their new musical revue.
TV veteran Michael Lembeck -- whose only previous feature film credit, "The Santa Clause 2," should give you an idea of the level of sophistication here -- does a slick enough job and gets decent performances from his game cast. Collette is especially good.
He can't, however, disguise the fact that "Connie and Carla" is hardly a gay old time. On the fabulousness scale by which all drag queen comedies are judged, it's a few parakeets short of "The Birdcage."
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.