Review: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

See Dover Koshashvili’s devastating Late Marriage for a superior variation of the same theme.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Photo: IFC Films

Short, cute, and completely inoffensive, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a dusty tale of intermarriage that should be familiar to anyone who’s stepped anywhere near Moonstruck or even Four Weddings and a Funeral. Frumpy Greek daddy’s girl Toula (Nia Vardalos) is 30 years old and “way past her expiration date.” Things get sketchy on the home front when she falls for a nice white boy (John Corbett) whose parents have Bundt cakes lodged up their WASP posteriors. Based upon Vardalos’s one-woman show, Greek Wedding is a meet-cute romantic comedy colored with broad ethnic humor. Driven by equal parts pride and shame, Vardalos’s parodies of family values are frequently funny and, for the most part, honest. She certainly has a strong screen presence (physical humor is her strong suit) though her script is considerably lazy. A round of ouzo at Toula’s engagement party seemingly negotiates the rift between WASP and Greek Orthodox cultures. The wedding here is just a wedding though the material is ripe with unfulfilled discourse on self-empowerment and the victory of feminism over traditional values. See Dover Koshashvili’s devastating Late Marriage for a superior variation of the same theme.

Score: 
 Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Joey Fatone, Bess Meisler, Louis Mandylor, Fiona Reid, Bruce Gray, Gerry Mendicino, Stavroula Logothettis, Constantine Tsapralis, Gia Carides  Director: Joel Zwick  Screenwriter: Nia Vardalos  Distributor: IFC Films  Running Time: 96 min  Rating: PG  Year: 2002  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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