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"You can't say 'Nam' when you weren't in Nam, you have to say Vietnam!"

Connie and Carla is a fraud on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. Written by Nia Vardalos, it is being positioned as her follow-up to My Big Fat Greek Wedding but cannot by definition appeal to such a broad audience. The smug ultra-high concept -- they're women posing as drag queens, see -- is ridiculously convoluted and realized in the most obvious way possible. Its pseudo-liberal politics are hideously condescending as opposed to accepting and tolerant. And as a movie, it's contemptible -- poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly acted and barely directed.

But let's step back for a second and talk about the 57-pound gorilla that was My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I despised the film, but as evidenced by its nearly 50-week theatrical run, $240 million gross, and my exploding inbox, I was the only one. The secret to that phenomenal and unexpected success was that the story of a traditional, quirky (and in my opinion, psychotic) Greek family dealing with their frumpy daughter's decision to marry an "outsider" crossed all demographic lines -- age, gender, political, what have you. It was carried by word of mouth, yes, but the reason that could happen is that everyone could safely recommend it to everyone else.

If anyone at Universal Studios even gave a thought to the ludicrous notion that Connie & Carla could become a breakout hit of similar proportions, that person is in dire need of a lobotomy. It is not just highly unlikely, it is impossible. Short of making a tender drama about a killing spree undertaken by a threesome of hedonistic Mormons, Vardalos could not have chosen a more comparatively niche-based sophomore project: a film set in the drag queen community that requires an acceptance of the flamboyant gay lifestyle as a prerequisite for enjoyment. That may be a laudable venture, but it is certainly disingenuous to market it as another Greek Wedding.

While we probably need a popular movie with a gay-friendly message right about now, Connie & Carla is too patronizing to fit the bill, telling us, essentially, that "gay people aren't freaks." It also makes the implicit insinuation that all gays are effeminate cross-dressers who attend drag acts every Friday and Saturday. Well, it doesn't so much assert this as fail to offer a counterexample, but it's still pretty odious.

Much like Greek Wedding, this stuff wouldn't be offensive if only it were funny. Alas, the film can offer us nothing. It does absolutely nothing with its central hook, viz. the dynamic duo of Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette "disguising" themselves as drag queens to hide from the mob. There is no substantive difference between the sight of Connie and Carla performing showtunes as themselves in a pathetic airport lounge as the film opens and then performing them "in drag" -- I guess they're wearing more make-up, but the comic potential of the premise goes entirely unexploited. There's no urgency or fear that they might be discovered, and at one point the Collette character even challenges the real drag queens to feel how natural Vardalos' "fake" breasts feel. First of all, eew. Second of all, that doesn't sound like a terribly smart thing for someone in that situation to do, and the laughter dividends that the scene pays out don't justify sacrificing reason. It would have been so much funnier had the protagonists instead gone to absurd lengths to protect their fake identities. That would have resembled a thing we like to call comedy.

There is a subplot about a straight man (David Duchovny) who comes to reestablish contact with his cross-dressing brother and force himself to tolerate his lifestyle. The problem is -- ready for this? -- Carla falls in love with him, but he thinks she's a drag queen. This leads to a lot of clunky, uncomfortable nonsense wherein Carla spontaneously kisses the poor guy, he thinks he's just been kissed by a man, runs away, and comes back later to pour his heart out and apologize. It's more bizarre than funny, and I squirmed watching Fox Mulder mired in the middle of it. There was a point, around the time of Return to Me and Full Frontal when I thought that Duchovny's post-X-Files career was going in the right direction, but when he vanished from the face of the earth and then reappeared in this, I took it as a bad sign.

The ending is an incomparable debacle, with Special Guest Stars, extra-peppy musical numbers, synchronized cheering and more. Who in their right mind thought this would work?