My Big Fat Greek Wedding: DVD & Movie Review (2002)

(Originally published 2002)

Joel Zwick’s hilarious comedy, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," begins on a high note and sustains it beautifully.

As the film opens, frumpy, 30-year-old Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) is looking rather glum and desperate as her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), expresses his disappointment with her inability to find a man willing to marry her. "You’re looking old," Gus says worriedly.

In an inspired flashback, the film jumps to the hell of Toula’s childhood, where we’re struck with the tell-tale truth of her unconventional appearance as a child. "I was a swarthy 6-year-old with sideburns," she says—and she’s not kidding.

Fastforwarding to the present, Toula sums up her current problems with biting, yet understandable cynicism: "Like all Greek women, I was put on Earth to marry Greek boys, make Greek babies and feed everyone until the day I die."

Well, maybe and maybe not.

The film, from a script Vardalos based on her own experiences and culled from her one-woman show, is about a bright yet sheltered woman who’s been waiting three decades for her life to begin.

For her overbearing Greek family, that means following the same blueprint for wedded success that generations of other Greek women have followed. But for Toula, who has her own ideas about what works best for her, it means finding the courage to leave her family’s restaurant, the Dancing Zorbas, attend college--and find a man on her own terms.

With the help of her mother, Maria (Lainie Kazan), and her Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin), she does just that—and blooms into a beauty in the process. But there’s a hitch: The man Toula falls in love with and plans to wed isn’t Greek at all. He’s a WASP named Ian Miller (John Corbett), a fact that sends Toula’s family straight into a tailspin—and leaves some of them rushing for the Ouzo.

The film, which was released last April and has since gone on to become the sleeper hit of the summer, works because of the care and attention that went into the script and the creation of its characters.

It’s unabashedly formulaic and its laughs come almost entirely from its ethnic exaggerations, but its seams don’t rub against the screen and its jabs at Greek culture and Greek Americans are never cruel, which is key. Instead, the film is affectionate and loving, a spirit that sustains the movie and makes it a must-see comedy.

Grade: A-