Connie and Carla

It's the chemistry between Vardalos and Collette that gives the film its magical dazzle. Despite Vardalos' ingratiating, big and breathy presence, Collette, as the pulse and conscience of these two dreamers, very nearly steals the film.

Connie and Carla is a good-hearted comedy that missteps by trying to become a moralistic one.

A clever idea, but it's not quite pulled off.

Nia Vardalos carved herself a niche with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" in 2002, and she's still furiously digging away at it with the screechy, unpleasant comedy Connie and Carla.

Although the transvestites’ plight – mishandled, misunderstood, and/or misappropriated – is meant to supply Connie and Carla's emotional core, one never gets the feeling of anything stronger than an at-shoulder-length's sympathy from this film.

Plays like a genial amateur theatrical, the kind of production where you'd like it more if you were friends with the cast. The plot is creaky, the jokes are laborious, and total implausibility is not considered the slightest problem.

One suspects Vardalos's movies aren't written as much as up-chucked, the result of all-night binges on SnackWells and Oxygen network reruns.

Something like "Some like it hot" with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe. Two singers witness a murder and take off to save their lives. They hide as the opposite sex. They make friends with the opposite sex folks they hang out with. But one of them falls in love. Basically the same story.