Connie and Carla

I may be a sucker for girls in drag – hell, I’ll curtsey before Garbo’s Queen Christina anytime – but even my weakness for gender-bending femmes couldn’t inspire much hope for Connie and Carla. In fact, the very prospect of a movie where Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette evade the mob by impersonating drag-queens had me reaching for my Dutch living will.
As one might expect, Vardalos’ follow-up to My Big Fat Greek Wedding is less Amy Jolly than tyrannically jolly, trading in precisely the same megaphone-in-the-face humour and regurgitated plot as its inexplicably huge predecessor. Imagine Victor/Victoria vs Sister Act vs Saturday Night Live and a screenplay littered with exclamation marks (! – the unsightly bourgeois extravagance of the punctuation world) and you’ll have the right idea.
Imagine also – if you dare - lots of sequins, a forced fabulousness and the kind of crass pink pound courting that one might more readily associate with a particularly needy rent-boy and the picture should become even more chillingly vivid.
And yet, despite the Birdcage–ish flouncing and flapping, it’s difficult to completely dislike our two dame-divas Collette and Vardalos. They’re just so charmingly gawpy and eager to please, and their tireless (oftimes tiring) antics will almost certainly make great viewing for anyone who’s had the good sense to get liquored up at an Anne Summers party beforehand.
Speaking for the rest of us though; some like it not.

97 mins. Cert 15pg. Opens June 11