Rating: 
Summary: A silly, too long television show.
Review: I wanted to like this! I wanted to like it because of the hype I heard: non-mainstream, real-looking lead, little film that could.And what did I see? A cliche-ridden, insulting, incongruous Raffi-song of a movie. (Actually, I LIKE Raffi. But Raffi's great qualities: obvious and comforting humor, exotic (but not TOO)looks, DO NOT WORK in a FULL LENGTH MOVIE! Like a bad TV show, the narration doesn't match what's going on. "We lived in a middle class neighborhood," she almost laments. Middle of WHAT class? My most recent real estate magazine has houses like that going for 200 or 300 thousand. She's ALLLlll alone at Greek school. So how do the 30 dozen relatives her own age all live within walking distance when she's a grown up? Most important for me, (a child of immigrants) is that they don't adequately answer, if Greece is so flippin' great, what they are all doing here. The only reason I watched the whole movie was to find out if they finally did admit that the United States is a better place to be. It was glossed over. (And having lived other places, I choose to stay in the US--and don't spend my time whining for the mother country.) Oh yeah, and the romance was dull, which is why the social aspect gets such a large part of my review. Darn it, I had such high hopes.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: I just finished watching the DVD of this about 20 minutes ago. We got it from the video/DVD store (me and my Mum), and we're glad we did. It's soooo hilarious!
The movie starts off a bit slow, but builds up gradually. The first big laugh came when Toula went to get brochures for Ian, and nearly got strangled by her own microphone cord.
This is a funny look at the lives of a Greek family living in America. The family are over the top - Toula has 25 first cousins, and they all come together for the wedding.
The Dad is really funny - he freaks out about Toula marrying a man who isn't Greek and keeps telling her she's "getting old". Toula is only 30, she's not old!
The part on Toula's wedding day where all the girls are together is sooo funny - when she gets a zit and they tell Toula's Dad it is a mosquito bite, and when Nicky is waxing her moustache.
It has some laugh out loud moments, and is a generally good introduction to the Greek way of living.
If you like "Bend It Like Beckham", you'll love this.
If you like comedy, you'll love this, too!
Rating:
Summary: A Big Fat Greek Fairy Tale
Review: Canadian-Greek comic actress Nia Vardalos delivers a a wonderful performance to her personally scripted MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. This was inspired by her real-life wedding. I saw this movie in a theatre on Thanksgiving Day 2002 and really enjoyed it. Joey Fatone of the singing group N'Sync appears in the film as Angelo. I bought this VHS tape for my mom shortly after its release and gave it to her for her birthday in June. Vardalos' character Toula has been often pressured by her father since she was 15 years old to get married and 15 years later,she finally did. Toula met Ian Miller,portrayed by John Corbett,star of HBO's Sex and the City,at the travel agency which she at one point in the film found employment. After a whirlwind courtship,they married. Miller is an American man. Toula is first seen as a nerdy plain Jane which was why she couldn't fall in love. So later she trashes the glasses and installs contact lenses in her eyes. She beautifully styles her hair and applies make-up,including lipstick. If she hadn't done those things,Ian wouldn't have fallen in love with Toula. But then again,Ian could have fallen for her because of her inner beauty. Lainie Kazan and Michael Constantine are Vardalos' parents in the film. Gia Carides plays Vardalos' sister. After the wedding,we see Toula and Ian about five years later,with their son beginning kindergarten. Vardalos' real-life husband is Ian Gomez who is Canadian-Hispanic. They met while they were cast members on Second City TV in their native Canada. This film inspired the short-lived CBS sitcom "My Big Fat Greek Life" which only lasted about two months and precisely six episodes according to tvtome.com. Kazan,Constantine and Carides were all part of the TV cast. There were different characters though. Vardalos' TV character is Nia Portakolos with Steven Eckholdt playing her husband. There were also flashbacks in every episode where we see Nia as a child and her younger-looking mom and dad. This blockbuster,like every other,deserves a sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: personal
Review: This is a very interesting film, in many ways.
First good thing, to watch this film is a most-welcome change to a mainstream sex and death culture that has long become a constant emanation from Hollywood... This independent film, (i.e., made outside of the film monopoly domain) inadvertedly carries, to some extend, "industrial" attributes, but retains the enticing freshness and some enterprising character of a personal first make.
Ms Nia Vardalos, the author and protagonist (a "stand -up comedian", as we are informed ) keeps a line of self-parody in the script. This may be a way to ward off the dangers of self- indulgence (and hubris...) but she seems to not have decided one point of view for the viewer. Being herself a Greek American, her agon and agony is to keep both influences of her world, family tradition and the new society in which she grew up, happy together, to not lose herself... We see her difficulty of striking a balance in this conflict, of which this film may be an account.
She takes the way of comedy, and comedy she does, hilarious and entertaining, but do not expect comedy to be always exact to truth or fair to everybody, nor has it ever been since Aristophanes, who, in "The Clouds", so ridiculed Socrates, in his own presence, that the latter had to stand up in the very theatre and ask the citizens to speak the difference!
[From my distance, I would think it not difficult to be Greek and American (or any other nationality), not only because "all words are Greek" as the father Portokalos would say, (by the way, portokali, the modern Greek word for orange, ...is a Portuguese word) but because Greekness is something deeper: it is there in the American constitution, as well as in the English language.] Here we find a gens of one Greek family, that has retained its rural traditions, its close knit structure under the patriarchal hierarchy, with all the good and bad consequences. We witness the process of emancipation of one member, a woman, naturally as it comes with education in the liberal social environment of a large city. And also we see her make some very personal choices, and how the family adjusts. There is one striking point of irony in this story: The tendency of the heroine is outwards, to set the limits of her personal freedom against the family hierarchy of "rural" values. She chooses a husband outside the family propriety, but, instead of becoming an "outcast", the bridegroom would rather enter the family,adopting all the exterior attributes of "greekness" that signal membership. Finally an Aristophanic "Peace" is celebrated with the Big Fat Greek Wedding ... In the dangerous reality of the vast and erratically organized city, slow or indifferent to the needs of its disorganized and unattended individuals, the warmth, care and protection of a kicking alive traditional family has an extra appeal...
Under the comedy script, we can see and listen to the pains of this immigrant community to fit in the new environment, to learn from it without forgetting its values, to give and take equally.
Throughout the film there is the presence of the real person, Nia Vardalos, who tells her story--a story embellished with the jokes that will keep people happy; these two things, a personal story, told in a way that will entertain.
A few points:
The fellow pupils tease the little immigrant girl for her "foreign" food and foreign language lessons. The little girl is torn between her loyalty to her age group and loyalty to her family. You can guess who wins the moment, if not the day, so she turns her question to her mother: "Why do I have to go to Sunday school, out of all?" --"So you can write to your mother in law, when you get married!ยป is the answer she gets...
At the end of the film, Ms Vardalos's heroine has obviously given herself a more plausible answer than the one she had received in her childhood, so she sends her own child to the Sunday school,too, to learn Greek: Learning is a good thing...
Family ties: The "father of the family" hands out a cheque with a large sum to the newly wed, to buy their house. I am surprised that this has to take place at the wedding party, in front of the stage lights
Mystification: To many, religious ceremonies are bewildering...People in the film do not seem to understand very much of what is going on during a baptism or a wedding at their church.
A very funny film, and more, a different voice, a woman's voice, an "ethnic" minority voice, a Greek American voice, a person's voice.
Rating:
Summary: expected more..... but funny... not overly funny..
Review: I rented this movie after hearing all the "hype" surrouding this movie, that was supposidly great, and super funny, ect...
I also have a thing for "wedding" themed movies..
So, The movie seemed to drag at parts... but WAS funny, but not super funny like I thought it would be.
It was a good movie, don't get me wrong.. but I think monsoon wedding was much better..
Rating: 
Summary: cute, entertaining, but not superfantastic
Review: Just saw it for the first time. My opinion? Funny without being hilarious, charming (but not TOO charming), cute and heartwarming...but somehow not quite as funny or endearing as I expected, from all the rave reviews it's gotten. The bad? Tired storylines, borderline cliche. The good? Great cast performances, enough good quotable lines to make the cliche-bordering forgivable. (What do you mean he don't eat no meat??) I had a good time watching it. Three out of five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie!
Review: Makes me rethink about how important all the traditions stuff are. Weddings with traditions should be fun and happy and this movie makes a great example of it. I highly recommended for those who are getting marry soon and thinks doing all the traditional stuff are not worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Way over-rated waste of a movie
Review: This is, by far, the most over-rated movie of last year. Throughout the entire movie, we never learn who any of these characters are, why they felt in love, or why we should care. ALL characters in this movie exists to serve boring stereotypes-Greeks, WASPs, the single woman, the ideal man, reluctant father, etc. They do not serve any real plot, development, or real emtions. The entire movie is one gag, or cute scene, after another. If you are an airhead desperately looking for a handsome beau, you might find some shallow comfort in this aimless farce of wish fulfillment.
This movie is not entirely bad, however. It's just difficult to stay with any these characters. They pop in and out to serve a gag. "Hey, I am Greek! This is how we behave!" Ok, we get the point, after the first ten minutes. Can we please move on? Stereotypes get old fast. The only challenge in this movie is Nia Vardalos, whose unflattering appeal is an interesting departure from your typical Hollywood, run of the mill silicones.
Rating:
Summary: makes me want to drown my sorrows in moussaka
Review: Every word comes from some Greek word.
Windex can cure anything.
Greek people are loud and like cheap looking weddings. And there you are, the jokes and laughs of the entire movie. Funny huh? Well not after 50 times hearing them in an hour and a half.
I can just see it now, the writers trying to convince producers that this movie was a good idea. "you see, we take this really boring age-old story of the ugly duckling gets a make-over and gets her prince charming....but with GREEK people!! Wont it be FUNNY to see a bunch of half-drunk stereotyped Medeterraineans run around hugging eachother and fighting?" Maybe it looked better on paper, but I highly doubt it.
But the real moment when I realized that this movie would require excessive amounts of NyQuil poured on my midnight snack of cornflakes was when I saw Joey Fatone waltz onto the screen. He has this little smirk on his face the whole time...like he is really proud of himslef. But let me say, I am proud of MYSELF that I didn't give in to my urge to get up and smash the TV, stick some dynomite in it, and watch it explode while having the satisfaction that this aweful movie was just sent to the other dimension, right along with "Glitter" and the entire "Rambo" series. FOR GOODNESS SAKES PEOPLE!!!! If you want something funny go rent "Spinal Tap" or "Ferris Beullers Day Off"...
Rating:
Summary: A fun 90 minutes
Review: When I first heard of this movie, I was not looking forward to it. However, I really liked it. It is the story of a Greek woman who is part of a huge, cohesive family unit, who not only does everything with each other, but owns their own restaurant. They won't even associate with anyone who is not Greek. The woman's name is Toula. Toula is somewhat lonely, because she is single. Her dad wants her to do what Greek girls do. Marry a Greek man, have a bunch of Greek kids, and make lots of Greek food. Of course, she meets an American man, falls in love, and marries him. This pleases her dad none too much, therein lies the conflict. The movie is about the characters, not the plot. The actors are all relative unknowns. There is not one legitimate star in the cast. It's similar to "Blair Witch Project" in that it was a sleeper hit. Not a large budget, small opening circulation. But word of mouth is still the best advertising. This movie will appeal to you if your family is anything like this one. My family is not like this, but I see my wife's family here. They are tight knit, and they do everything together. However, they only use Windex to clean the glass.
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