Starring: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Gia Carides
Director: Joel Zwick.
Rated: G
MURIEL’S, My Best Friend’s, Monsoon – there have been plenty of cinema wedding titles in recent years.
All these films are comedies and offer plenty of laughs. However, under the bright surface, there are much more serious issues. This means that while the films entertain while they are on the screen, they have something more to say, for audiences to take away and think about.
The obvious thing about a Greek wedding is that it is a profoundly as well as superficially a cultural affair. Everybody is in on it. It is loud, exuberant, full of eating, drinking and dancing.
Which is all right if you are Greek. But, what if you are from a traditional American WASP-style family and exuberance is not your middle name? Then you have to learn to open up and break out.
This must be a significant message in the US today because the modestly budgeted My Big Fat Greek Wedding has taken more than US$100 million in America alone.
It also travels quite well because the issues are pretty universal – the patriarchal culture where the father decides everything (or where the shrewd mothers make the fathers think they have decided everything), where no one is supposed to marry outside the culture, where the old country traditions are the only ones because they have formed the greatest culture the world has every known! Of course, this could be an Italian wedding or an Irish wedding.
The film was originally a one-woman theatre piece, performed by Nia Vardalos. The story is that Rita Wilson saw it and enjoyed it, mentioned it to her husband Tom Hanks who invited Nia to Los Angeles not only to write it for the screen but to be the star. And so it is.
Nia Vardalos appears frumpy but, before our eyes, gains self-confidence and transforms into a fine-looking (as distinct from pretty/beautiful) woman.
Into the Portakalos restaurant and into the family comes Ian Miller (John Corbett) and, for a while, pandemonium ensues. But, you know that in this era of multiculturalism, the Millers will have to learn to be more Mediterranean and the Portakalos family will have to add their Greek heritage to the American tradition. And that’s it.
