My Big Fat Greek Wedding

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Summary: Really funny if you are not Greek, HYSTERICAL if you are...
Review: After recently enduring a big fat Greek wedding of my own, I was eagerly anticipating the release of this film. Nia Vardalos captured the endearing nutsy-ness of the paragon Greek-American family. Her intent, I'm sure, is to paint a broad caricature of all things Greek, to hilarious results. My non-Greek husband and my Greek self were rolling in the aisles. I literally laughed until I cried. A little bit of interesting info - Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had a hand in this film (producers maybe?). And with good reason, Rita Wilson is Greek and they had a big fat Greek wedding of their own!

Rating:
Summary: The Funniest This Year
Review: This has got to be the funniest movie that we have seen this year. It's an absolute riot. In addition, the cultural mix that takes place between the American and the Greek is very good. It really supports a laying down of traditions, with a start of compromises from both sides. Everyone needs to see this one.

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Summary: I'll see this one again!
Review: My Big Fat Greek Wedding was one of the best weddings I've ever been too! I really didn't know anything about this movie when I went to see it, but I am so glad I did. The entire audience was laughing during the whole movie and I'm pretty sure that, like my friends & I, they weren't all Greek. I do come from a large extended family & it was great to see the interactions of Toula's family on the screen. The "bundt" scene is priceless! I'm planning to take a friend to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding this weekend, and I can hardly wait!

Rating:
Summary: Gotta Be Greek To Understand
Review: This was a fantastic movie. Very realistic and funny. The close knit family, the huge wedding party, the Greek way of thinking will really touch the spirit of all Greeks who see this. I highly recommend this movie to everyone.

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Summary: Another recipe from the American Melting Pot
Review: "America the melting pot" is a worn out cliché, but its tiresomeness doesn't detract from the fact that MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING is an amusing and appealing tale of the process in action.

Nia Vardalos wrote the play on which this film version is based, in which she stars as Toula Portokalos, the 30 year old unmarried daughter of restaurateur Gus Portokalos (Michael Constantine). Toula is a frumpy, bespectacled "seating hostess" in her father's Chicago establishment. Though the life cycle of a Greek girl is to marry a Greek boy, have lots of Greek kids, and spend her life feeding an extended Greek family, Gus is beginning to doubt Toula's ability to pull this off - particularly the first bit. Realizing she doesn't have a life, Toula connives with her mother Maria (Lainie Kazan) to land a job in her aunt's travel agency. Now, out in the real world - with the help of a cosmetic and fashion makeover - she meets and falls in love with high school teacher Ian Miller (John Corbett). Ian is decidedly not Greek. He's the only son of affluent, coldly reserved, WASP parents. The film's comedic plot revolves around the awkwardness resulting from the collision of two very different cultures during the course of Ian and Toula's BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. For example, when the elder Millers pull up in front of the Portokalos house for an initial get-acquainted get-together, they're appalled to see the entire Portokalos clan - Toula has 27 first cousins - roasting an animal carcass in the front yard. Did I mention that the Millers are vegetarians?

I never felt the same affinity and sympathy for Gus and his family as I did for Lalit Verma and his family in MONSOON WEDDING, a splendid Indian film that is driven more by character development than by comic situations. Perhaps it was also because Lalit was coping with some very real predicaments, while Gus's problems are of his own mind's making. However, MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING still works because the people seem very real. Toula and Ian are attractive in a reasonable, but not intimidating, way. (This isn't a cutely tousled Meg Ryan meets a handsomely charming Tom Hanks soap opera.) Ms. Kazan is terrific as the "family neck" which can turn the obstinate "family head" (Gus) in any way that she pleases. Both movies stress the value of large-family relationships, something long forgotten by the miniscule, Nuclear Age American families of WASP heritage that strive for independence from tribal obligations.

Oh, and I have to believe the makers of Windex forked over some big bucks to support this film's production. Otherwise, who would've brought to our attention this stuff's amazing properties?

Rating:
Summary: Looking for that perfect movie? Here it is!
Review: One of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. Another hard-to-please family member who saw it remarked, "I haven't laughed this much since 'Some Like It Hot.'" This movie is about Toula (Nia Vardolos), a completely Americanized girl from a very traditional Greek family, who finally finds the guy of her dreams, Ian (John Corbett from Sex and The City). Ian is the only child of straight-laced country clubby waspy parents (much to the loudly-expressed dismay of Toula's family). Ian and his family are completely unprepared for the large, boisterous and opinionated clan they're about to join through matrimony. The planning surrounding the wedding is mesmerizing and hilarious as cultures and future in-laws clash. The fun is always good natured and the laughs are all big. Another part of the movie's appeal is watching Toula blossom from a plain Jane dutiful daughter (destined, the family assumed, to old maidhood at the ripe old age of 30) into a sparkling woman who knows what she wants. Based on Vardolos' one woman show and produced by Tom Hanks. Apparently the show struck a special chord with Hanks who experienced something similar when he married Rita Wilson who also hails from a traditional Greek background. About as perfect as a movie can be. No need to be Greek to enjoy it immensely.

Rating:
Summary: funny
Review: I really loved this movie. It was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Anyone who comes from any kind of cultural backround will really love this movie.

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Summary: Big fat loads of warmth and charm.
Review: "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" dwells in the same happy territory as "Monsoon Wedding" and "Moonstruck." If it lacks the poetry of those two great movies, nevertheless it is an eminently likable entertainment. Screenwriter/star Nia Vardalos goes the semi-autobiographical route as she plays Toula, the wallflower of a huge, boisterous Chicago Greek family, who unexpectedly finds love with an Anglo-Saxon hunk. Can she overcome her family's objections to a non-Greek son-in-law? Does spanokopita have spinach? In any case, Vardalos is a charmer, and so is the rest of the cast, including John Corbett as her intended, Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan as her parents, Louis Mandylor as her brother, and wonderful, fabulous Andrea Martin as her aunt. This movie, like Toula's family, is loud, happy, and sweet; after seeing it, you'll want to raise a glass of ouzo and shout "Opa!" at everyone you meet.

Rating:
Summary: crowd pleasing ethnic comedy
Review: ***1/2 "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is a true crowd-pleasing triumph, a lighthearted look at that age-old clash between Old World customs and New World values that has so defined the American immigrant culture. Written by Nia Vardalos and directed by Joel Zwick, the film - though it focuses more on the woman than the man in the relationship - is, in many ways, an ethnic Greek version of "Meet the Parents," with John Corbett as the outsider trying to impress the family of his fiancé, Toula Portokalos, played by none other than the screenwriter herself. Toula is an introverted, 30-year old plain Jane who still has enough personal ambition to want something better than the life her father, a traditionalist from the old school, has mapped out for her. Her options, as defined by tradition, boil down to two: marriage to a Greek man (an increasingly unlikely possibility) or a "career" helping run the family restaurant business. Toula's father's dreams for her begin to crumble when she enrolls in college and falls in love with a handsome high school English teacher. Not unexpectedly, much of the humor of the film derives from Toula's father's apoplectic reaction to his daughter's unconventional life choices, the good-natured parodying of the accoutrements of Greek culture, and the juxtaposition between the unbridled crassness and high-spirited nature of Toula's family and the soulless propriety of John's uptight WASP parents.

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" doesn't break any new ground thematically, and some of the humor in the earlier sections might have been more effective had it been developed less along the lines of broad slapstick and more along the lines of verbal subtlety. Nevertheless, the introductory sequences, tracing the nightmarish childhood Toula had to go through living with her Greek-obsessed father, are very clever and very funny. And once Toula and John's relationship is uncovered to the family, the film hits its stride and never lets up. Credit director Zwick with keeping the action moving along at a merry clip (the wedding morning sequence is particularly well paced) and Vardalos with keeping the one-liners coming fast and furious.

As an actress, Vardalos has a natural charm that compensates for a certain stiffness that creeps into her performance from time to time, and Ian Miller complements her nicely as her bemused but stalwart intended. Michael Constantine walks off with the film as Toula's hyperkinetic father, and Lainie Kazan provides both heft and ballast as Toula's shrewd and rational mother, who long ago learned to play the game of this male dominated society to her own (and her spiritedly independent daughter's) advantage. In fact, the entire cast of supporting actors and actresses is superb.

Marked by a high energy level and a generous spirit, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is one of those small films that, through sheer word-of-mouth, will have no trouble finding that specialized audience that can fully appreciate its manifold pleasures and charms.

Rating:
Summary: one of my new favorite films!
Review: if you're greek...especially if you're a greek girl who's been raised in america...you'll totally identify with Toula, the film's heroine. sooo many of the moments rang true for me. some of them were poignant, some of them were hilariously funny...for greeks and nongreeks alike!

as a greek american, i never thought i'd see any of this reach the big screen. i've grown up feeling like a mutant, celebrating easter so late, going to a chuch most kids never heard of...it was maddening. but now, i realize i'm not alone. ...