My Big Fat Greek Wedding Review
By Joe Lozito
Grecian Formulaic
The story that brought "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" to the screen is as interesting a fairy tale as anything in the film itself. As the story goes, Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson (herself a Greek-American) saw Nia Vardalos' one-woman show and decided it needed to be produced and, thankfully, cast with actors who actually look like regular people. The latter decision is what saves "Wedding" from being a stardard Hollywood ugly-girl-whips-off-her-glasses-and-becomes-a-movie-star story. The characters look like they could be the family next door - assuming, of course, that you live next door to the 1950s.
The ideas in Ms. Vardalos' script are no doubt based on her own upbringing. Her proud Greek family only marries other Greeks in the hopes of "breeding more Greeks". Her father only wants his daughters to "marry Greek men, make Greek children and feed everyone". He'll even tell you how every word can be derived from an original Greek word. Michael Constandine seems oddly miscast as Toula's ultra-nationalistic father - his accent in particular seems absurdly thick - while Lainie Kazan makes an appropriately shrill matriarch. The boundaries of characterization are pushed further still with the casting of SCTV alum Andrea Martin as an Aunt who seems straight out of a vaudeville routine. By and large the rest of the cast blends together well and forms a believable family unit.
Ms. Vardalos' has loaded her charmingly fluffy script with cute idiosyncrasies in place of actual characters. Only Toula herself seems grounded in reality thanks in part to Ms. Vardalos' heart-felt performance. It's like the concept behind "The Brady Bunch Movie", but in reverse. This time the main character is modern, but everyone else in the film is from the past.
Ostensibly, the film follows Toula who, fed up with her father telling her she looks old (she's 30), goes back to school to get an education. She learns to work with computers and gives herself a makeover Jenny Jones would be proud of. Almost instantly, she begins dating Ian Miller (John Corbett), a decidedly non-Greek English teacher who seems mildly amused by everything around him. Mr. Corbett's character is a fairy tale Prince Charming in this Chicago setting. As he says, he has "no friends" and "comes alive" when he meets Toula. At one point he started spouting so many clichéd compliments that I thought the scene was going to be revealed to be a dream sequence.
For all the film's build up about Toula's Greek family not accepting an outsider into its ranks, Ian's assimilation is fairly simple. Because Ian is agreeable to the point of almost not existing at all, the relationship between him and Toula holds no weight. Yes, the film features some very humorous, mildly embarrassing moments, but nothing even approaching the farce of the superior "Meet the Parents".
In the end, thanks to Ian's catatonic parents and lack of character, Toula has her Greek wedding with all the trimmings. Despite her few modest reservations about the garish bridesmaid's dresses or her threats of eloping to Vegas, she ends up having the exact wedding her family wants to have - complete with invitations that misspell the names of Ian's parents! What, then, was the point of the movie? Well, taken as a light comedy, it's good for some laughs. It pokes good-natured fun at some easy targets, but it does so in the way you'd make fun of your own family: not too loudly, and with a quick "just kidding" at the end.
