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.
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