My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Simply A Masterpiece

Load of rubbish!!

Great Film overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Nia Vardalos captures the unhappiness of Toula who is 30, single ,works unhappily at the family restaurant with no future prospects & dresses to reflect her quiet despair , drowning in the noise of her large , loud , hirsute , intrusive , brash , working-class Greek immigrant family in Chicago, crushed by her dramatic , sweet , manipulative , over- emotional Greek father , who believes that women shouldn't be educated , but must be Greek virgins who marry nice Greek boys & become matriarchs who rule the family kitchens.Toula's father is subverted by her mother & aunt who scheme together , resulting in a new Toula- a woman who takes charge , gets an education , a new job, new friends , confidence & catches the eye of her future husband, played by John Corbett, an easy going high school teacher who adores her & isn't Greek ( to Toula's fathers dissapointment ) but is an upper middle class wasp, with conservative , refined , quiet country-club , lawyer parents. The latter half of the film is about a mildly hilarious clash between the Greek working class and the upper crust prim , polite wasps , with Toula cringing all the way to the altar.

In 2016, we were granted yet another sequel no one was asking for and so, it sparked me to see the original a second time. I remember seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding one time only in theatres 14 years ago and loving it. I laughed out loud and found it charming, an interesting look into a stereotypical Greek family and romantic. But, the laughter I had, mostly about the Grandma's escape plans and the Windex® commercials, I recall the most.Sadly, almost a decade and a half later, it didn't hold up. Now, that's not saying I still didn't laugh at a few scenes, though surprisingly not about the Grandmother or Windex® – maybe that was the shock value back then, and I still feel it is charming, it just now feels like to me an extremely annoying family meets another stereotypical and blind to other cultures family.The story is simple: "aging" Toula is tired of her extended and meddling family and (literally, more than once) falls for a 90s stand-in good-guy reject. The object of her obsession is not Greek, like her family wants her to court, and is plainly, a one-note nice guy who's tired of all the same ole women. To spoil that they're gonna get married is fruitless due to the title, but the real spoiler is that no one's really fat. I suppose they're equating "fat" with "a lot" as in how many family members there are. OK, granted, the dad has some extra pounds and our heroine, Toula, isn't in the best of shape, but the word "fat" probably shouldn't have been used.Again, the movie is charming. It's harmless and cute. Plus it does have some genuine insight and the family, unbelievably, due to their annoying behavior, grows on you. So it's a recommendation.Now, as for the sequel I'm about to watch…well…I will be disappointed if, 14 years later, Toula isn't actually fat. Now that, I would laugh at.***Final thoughts: What a fall from grace. I didn't write a review on this movie 14 years ago, the only time I've seen it, but I distinctly remember granting it 5/5 stars and thought it was one of the funniest movies I had seen. Awww, I miss the innocent old Steve.

Boy, how well does this film holds up 14 years later. Can we finally admit to its greatness now?Whatever tropes it derives from the rom-coms of old serve only to make us feel comfortable in its grasp. But don't let the formula fool you. This film is anything but cloying. It opts out of cliché and sappy--instead, giving us rompy situations that we could actually see happening in our own lives. Toula, played by Nia Vardalos, who also wrote the film, is a 30-year-old woman whose family fears will become an eternal spinster. She doesn't seem to care about her appearance, and she is very awkward when it comes to talking to other people. She is of Greek origin, and her family won't let her forget it. They're the type who only talk to other Greek people. On the other hand, Toula doesn't care.She meets Ian (John Corbett), who isn't Greek. They fall in love and want to get married, but have to deal with the wrath of her family--mostly her father, played by Michael Constantine.The cast is perfect--especially Constantine, who we are often times convinced is Vardalos' actual father playing himself.The humor is mostly made of inside jokes from Greek culture. If you're not savvy on that, you might think you won't understand. But the script does an excellent job of not making us feel like an outsider. And most of us have families with weird traditions and tendencies, too, so we get it.There are a few lulls in the narrative, but the script always recovers well with something funny around the corner.My Big Fat Greek Wedding is truly funny in the most organic way possible. The scenarios all seem real. Vardalos is believable and hilarious in the lead role. She channels the sort of uninhibitedness that Lucille Ball was known for. Almost like a Kristen Wiig before her time.But most of all, this film speaks to generations of society who can't see past cultural differences. It was relevant back in 2002, and is still very much that way now. It's a tale we've been seeing, in one way or another, for centuries now, but still can't seem to get us to change our ways. Although no one's life is at stake in this film, we could all learn a thing or two from the story. It's deceptively deep. Twizard Rating: 94

It's intriguing to note that despite My Big Fat Greek Wedding still boasting the title of the "highest grossing romantic comedy," like most romantic comedies, the impact this left on pop culture as a whole was slight and almost unrecognizable; similar to James Cameron's Avatar, still the highest grossing film worldwide, yet a film that sparks nothing but opinions that go against what people initially thought of the film. If My Big Fat Greek Wedding doesn't speak volumes about the genre of romantic comedies, I'm not sure what does.It's not necessarily that My Big Fat Greek Wedding is forgettable, but even worse, it kind of is what it is; a one-note joke or a Saturday Night Live skit stretched out to feature-length. The result is a film that incites a few smiles, chuckles, and an interesting indie sleeper hit story, but nothing more. Couple these features with the fact that this film's ending is just about the most unsurprising and corniest ending about family, acceptance, and difference I've yet to see in film, and you have a romantic comedy that really can't measure up to its level of monetary success by proving its much different than its less-impacting counterparts.The film revolves around Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos (Nia Vardalos), a quirky Greek woman in the middle of a fierce midlife crisis. At thirty, she is unmarried and ostracized by her parents Gus and Maria (Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan) for failing to find a man and become a "baby machine" like her older sister Athena (Stravroula Logothettis) to further give her parents purpose in their elderly years. Toula states early on in the film that the three prime expectations of Greek women are to marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and "feed everyone until the day she dies." Toula's parents are traditionalist Greeks in the sense that they wet guests' faces with kisses when they walk through the door, overstuff their guests with food, and, specifically Gus, try to cure every human ailment with Windex. Because of that, they seem to believe that all other people who aren't Greeks are secretly in denial of their heritage and wish they were Greeks. The family is in for a culture shock, however, when Toula meets and falls madly in love with Ian Miller (John Corbett), a handsome and kind school teacher, who just so happens to be non-Greek and lack any kind of discernible heritage, typical for many people who are fourth or fifth generation immigrants where culture is subsequently lost in the shuffle of assimilation.Regardless, the state of the family is sent into a dramatic tailspin by Toula's traditionalist parents, who can't see how this man is capable of anything without having a Greek background. The film becomes a story of Gus and Maria needing to accept their daughter's newfound beau, in addition to a story about Ian learning to accept Toula's parents for their very conservative and sometimes narcissistic view of their own heritage.The result is a film predicated off of lampooning, satirizing, and overblowing common conventions of Greek people, none of which so much as negative or harmfully stereotypical as much as they are pretty simple-minded and predictable. Having said that, the actors and actresses on hand make My Big Fat Greek Wedding the moderately enjoyable experience that it is, particularly Vardalos, who throws herself into the autobiographical tale of meeting her husband getting the respect that both her and him deserved. Before the big screen, which consisted of little else besides a $5 million budget from IFC Films and studio executives crossing their fingers that word of mouth would carry this picture, Vardalos conducted this project as a stage-play, in a manner that recalls the zealous energy exhibited by Tyler Perry to get noticed in the public eye. Assisted by a cast of spirited performers, particularly Michael Constantine, who knows how to tight-rope walk the fine line of overacting and emphatically portraying a brazen archetype of a character, Vardalos and her screenplay really cannot lose in the acting department.The problem, I suppose, with My Big Fat Greek Wedding is just how simple of a film it is. When you find out the film is largely about changing peoples' prejudices, which, to be fair, aren't really harmful in an explicit or predatory sense and more-or-less exist as the kind of impulsive small talk families create over Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner, the conflict really becomes silly at best. While this kind of friction definitely exists, there are more compelling stories to be told about a lack of acceptance in a family and this film, with its dramatic depictions that ultimately wind up conveying a silly sense of screwball comedy, get rather repetitive after a while and one is left trying to rest the weight of the film's quality on the shoulders of the performers, which isn't entirely fair for a comedy.My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the perfect "rainy Sunday" film in that it's simple enough where you could watch it over and over again and not get tired of it thanks to its generally upbeat and silly nature; a feel-good film, if you will, despite the fact that lead character is often made to feel bad. One could say it oversimplifies the everlasting hell out of Greeks and Greek culture, but circumventing to my point about this film leaving relatively no cultural footprint, I don't even think you could make such an argument. Save such for a film with an impact outside of the monetary sense.Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, and Stravroula Logothettis. Directed by: Joel Zwick.