Starring Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette. Rated PG.

If witnessing a nonstop stream of screaming, pratfalls, wigs, and Guys and Dolls tunes sounds worse than sitting through the repeated screeching of RuPaul's three-inch fake nails on a chalkboard, then stop reading this right now and go out and see Kill Bill: Vol. 2. But if the foregoing somehow seems like a grand old time, then you're the rather limited target market for Nia Vardalos's shamelessly campy bit of inanity.

The screenwriter-actor's follow-up to her hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding is, if possible, even broader, with more outsize stereotypes. The plot is so flimsy it's little more than a brief excuse to hurry the two lead ditzes into this one-joke movie's big setup. Connie and Carla (Vardalos and Toni Collette, respectively) are die-hard show-tune fans who work a tawdry airport lounge with their tacky Broadway revue. When the bar owner stashes his drugs in their bags and then gets whacked, these big-haired small-towners hit the road to go into hiding: they head to L.A. (a poorly disguised Vancouver) and go undercover as drag queens. A little more war paint and a deepening of their voices and they're the instant hit act (and the envy of those lazy lip-synchers) at the local gay hangout, the Handlebar. The only problem is, as female-impersonator impersonators, they can't let anyone in on their real gender.

This is no witty, contemporary spin on Victor/Victoria. Here, Vardalos and Collette fall squarely into the Lucille Ball school of comic acting. Fortunately for those in the audience who can't get enough of "Mame", they both know how to belt out a tune. But the laughs run thin long before the third time the film has milked the sight of the pair shrieking and running to put on shower caps and shaving cream whenever somebody comes to their apartment door.

Casting David Duchovny, with his subtle-to-the-point-of-catatonic acting style, amid this silly farce is akin to putting Rob Schneider into Kenneth Branagh's next Shakespearean epic. As the estranged brother of one of the local drag performers, and the straight love interest for Connie, he spends most of the movie looking vaguely bored and uncomfortable.

Never satisfied to simply ladle on the cheese, Vardalos makes her biggest mistake trying to lecture the audience on the need for women to be happy with their body shapes. And transsexuals are people too!

She's on much stronger ground when she's not relying on stereotypes: the pathologically shy Handlebar owner is a lot funnier than the familiar Russian gangsters, club queens, and knuckle-dragging boyfriends from back home.

It all culminates in a predictably madcap climax of kooky costumes, mobsters, chases, dinner theatre, and more "Mame"--again, a scenario that will probably terrify a lot of people out there.