Connie and Carla

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

The result is pure, unabashed and unpretentious entertainment of a sort once a staple of the movies but now rare.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie's queer delight is contagious. You'll exit lip-synching.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The surprise -- and intermittent delight -- of Connie and Carla is the way that it taps into the everybody-is-a-star passion of the new sing-along culture.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Vardalos and Collette have mighty pipes, but it's Collette who moves with the confidence and flair of a musical theater veteran. Watching this film, I found myself caring less and less about the fairly predictable and safe story and waiting impatiently for the next number.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

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

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The chief appeal of this affectionate story is its embrace of those who are not thinner, richer and more glamorous than the moviegoers.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Vardalos may not have been the best possible Connie. But as Billy Wilder could have told you, nobody's perfect.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Full of high spirits and good vibes.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Isn't really a movie but a blatant girls' night out vehicle.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Vardalos has a talent, and there is one sequence in the movie that works. In the romantic subplot, Connie falls for Peaches' brother Jeff (David Duchovny, as Vardalos's sleepy, hunk replacement for John Corbett in Greek Wedding).

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

May be fairly funny, sort of sweet and slightly muddled, but one thing about it is utterly certain: It loves, loves, loves some bad cabaret.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

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

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

There are funny moments -- a cameo from Debbie Reynolds, an Evita sing-along -- but the film grows progressively more dispirited.

TV Guide Angel Cohn

Though positioned as a female buddy comedy, this uneven and overly busy comedy is more focused on the romantic travails of Vardalos and Duchovny, who's very nearly a carbon copy of her love interest in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

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.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

The cheerfully inane comedy Connie and Carla all but suffocates beneath a high-stepping, show-stopping, ear-splitting deluge of musical theater staples, from "Cats" to "Oklahoma!," "Jesus Christ Superstar" to "Fiddler on the Roof."

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Broad and cheesy, yet it is not utterly without a kind of junk-food appeal.

Variety David Rooney

It takes chutzpah to borrow from comedy maestros Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards, and Nia Vardalos would seem an unlikely candidate to get away with it unpunished.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Veteran TV director Michael Lembeck slides the movie into a sitcom mode that only further deadens the thin material. While Vardalos and Collette shine in the musical numbers, why didn't he bother to give the musical sequences a bit of pizzazz?

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Seems as much an imposter in the drag-queen world as its heroines; it fronts the sort of safely asexual gay characters found on network TV.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

As a female vocal duo, their performances are passable, if a little dull and lacking in any sense of camp exaggeration.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

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.

Empire Anna Smith

This is so derivative it has no soul of its own.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Vardalos' comedic style is old-fashioned in the worst way; her humor is stodgier than the most retro Catskills laughmeister.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Where "Wedding" introduced us to a Greek family most of us had never seen before, "Connie" plays out like a clumsy episode of "Laverne and Shirley:" familiar, phony and forgettable.

Washington Post Phillip Kennicott

The humor is rigorously unoriginal and it all feels a bit like minstrelsy, a freakish, ritualistic nod to things your grandfather might have found funny.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

Connie and Carla doesn't just do violence to the memory of Wilder's brilliant sex farce (Some Like It Hot); it's so clumsy, it might give cross-dressing itself a bad name.

Village Voice David Ng

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.