Film: My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Rating: ****
Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan
Directed by: Joel Zwick
Now showing at: Levski cinema, Multiplex
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a timely breath of fresh air for audiences threatened with suffocation by the standardised studio fare. It is a knowing, joyful, intelligent film that is both poking fun and showing affection for its characters' outlandish fixations.
The chaotic apparatus of the loud Greek family is stripped down to an anachronistic set up that will make a lot of contemporary Greeks frown, but its comic impact is a delight. The film is simply using the existing mythical absurdities within a community defiantly perpetuating its sometimes-bizarre tradition, and it milks its vast comic potential to the fullest. We are all so wonderfully sold on the idea, that when the happy ending finds us cheering instead of sneering when it inevitably comes along.
The film is narrated by Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos), an American Greek in her early thirties who is considered a failure by her family. They think she won't fulfill her mission in life as they see it: marry a Greek, have his children, feed everybody until she dies. Toula is a scruffy "seating hostess" at her father's restaurant instead of being a proud mother. She observes to herself that there is more to life than living up to her nagging family's expectations, yet she feels resolved to meet her cooking, child raising doom. That is, until a handsome non-Greek by the name of Ian Miller (John Corbett) enters the restaurant. Toula is smitten, and so much so that she acts on her heretical ambition: she enrolls in a college and starts dressing nicely. Soon enough she goes through an-ugly-duckling-turned-swan transformation garnered with redefined self-esteem. Right on cue she meets Ian again, and this time around he is smitten too.
The film is not terribly original at what it does. It's about two people who meet, like one another a lot, and are about to marry if they overcome a set of amusing, yet nonetheless valid, obstacles. What the film is very good at is making fun of its characters without being cynical about it. Unlike most commercially successful comedies of today (think Ben Stiller, Jim Carey, Adam Sandler), it does not put the protagonist in unbearably awkward predicaments in order to make the audience laugh. When pondering the success of the film Stateside, it is very comforting to see that a film does not need to heÁp misfortune on its characters in order to make audiences laugh. It is also satisfying to see the film sidestep romantic comedy's most irritating plot contrivance: keeping the loving pair apart in the third act so that a joyous reunion can be staged at the finale. Toula and Ian don't need that, the fact that Ian is a vegetarian and that Toula's father cannot see anything remotely Greek in him are enough trouble.
Nia Vardalos wrote the screenplay based on her one-woman play. As the legend goes she was having a successful run with it in Chicago's Second City Theater when Rita Wilson, being of Greek origin herself, saw it and convinced her husband Tom Hanks that they produce it for the big screen. So they did, and treated us to a wonderful surprise of freshness, reassuringly lacking any pretence or misleading gloss.
Rating: ****
Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan
Directed by: Joel Zwick
Now showing at: Levski cinema, Multiplex
My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a timely breath of fresh air for audiences threatened with suffocation by the standardised studio fare. It is a knowing, joyful, intelligent film that is both poking fun and showing affection for its characters' outlandish fixations.
The chaotic apparatus of the loud Greek family is stripped down to an anachronistic set up that will make a lot of contemporary Greeks frown, but its comic impact is a delight. The film is simply using the existing mythical absurdities within a community defiantly perpetuating its sometimes-bizarre tradition, and it milks its vast comic potential to the fullest. We are all so wonderfully sold on the idea, that when the happy ending finds us cheering instead of sneering when it inevitably comes along.
The film is narrated by Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos), an American Greek in her early thirties who is considered a failure by her family. They think she won't fulfill her mission in life as they see it: marry a Greek, have his children, feed everybody until she dies. Toula is a scruffy "seating hostess" at her father's restaurant instead of being a proud mother. She observes to herself that there is more to life than living up to her nagging family's expectations, yet she feels resolved to meet her cooking, child raising doom. That is, until a handsome non-Greek by the name of Ian Miller (John Corbett) enters the restaurant. Toula is smitten, and so much so that she acts on her heretical ambition: she enrolls in a college and starts dressing nicely. Soon enough she goes through an-ugly-duckling-turned-swan transformation garnered with redefined self-esteem. Right on cue she meets Ian again, and this time around he is smitten too.
The film is not terribly original at what it does. It's about two people who meet, like one another a lot, and are about to marry if they overcome a set of amusing, yet nonetheless valid, obstacles. What the film is very good at is making fun of its characters without being cynical about it. Unlike most commercially successful comedies of today (think Ben Stiller, Jim Carey, Adam Sandler), it does not put the protagonist in unbearably awkward predicaments in order to make the audience laugh. When pondering the success of the film Stateside, it is very comforting to see that a film does not need to heÁp misfortune on its characters in order to make audiences laugh. It is also satisfying to see the film sidestep romantic comedy's most irritating plot contrivance: keeping the loving pair apart in the third act so that a joyous reunion can be staged at the finale. Toula and Ian don't need that, the fact that Ian is a vegetarian and that Toula's father cannot see anything remotely Greek in him are enough trouble.
Nia Vardalos wrote the screenplay based on her one-woman play. As the legend goes she was having a successful run with it in Chicago's Second City Theater when Rita Wilson, being of Greek origin herself, saw it and convinced her husband Tom Hanks that they produce it for the big screen. So they did, and treated us to a wonderful surprise of freshness, reassuringly lacking any pretence or misleading gloss.
