My Big Fat Greek Wedding Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)July 26th, 2002
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Full Price Feature
If you have not heard of this little art house gem, by all means let me rectify that situation now. I had heard "oh it's so great" about a million times but somehow was never sucked in. Perhaps it's because it is so hard to see previews for art films with any regularity. Anyway, after running for a couple of weeks already, the house was packed still, which bodes well for the word of mouth campaign. More significantly, we all (not just my little effusive group) were laughing. A lot. Out loud. Belly laughs, not just "hee hee hee." This is a big deal. Movie audiences laugh, "ha ha" but they don't guffaw with the brash freedom of the people I was sitting around. We're talking "Oh my HAW HAW HAW!" rocking back and forth sort of laughing.
Is it funny? It's not chock full of jokes, it's full of painfully familiar situations and people and the universal awkwardness of families meeting and contrasting. We all have someone in our lives who we thought wonderful but too weird for "other people" to handle. We all have met people from our significant other's families who perhaps, made you worry that they would turn out the same way. But mostly, we are laughing out of delight. Horrible bridesmaid's dress? Check. Incredibly awkward flirtation? Got it. It's called "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," we know the heroine is going to get married, I'm not spoiling anything.
Big points to the screenwriter for making the dialogue both real and ideal. Ian (John Corbett) says something to Toula (Nia Vardalos) when they are in the restaurant that make you love him forever; I won't say what but if you saw it, you know. And Nia's performance - wow! She's a former Second City member who decided to take this one-woman show and make it into this lovely little small movie but I believe and hope that she will soon be as overnight huge as Roberto Benigni was in the US after Life is Beautiful.
Rita Wilson, lovely Greek wife to Tom Hanks, produced this film with her husband and Gary Goetzman under Hanks' Playtone label, which you might recognize from such shockingly heartfelt and good naturedly positive films as That Thing You Do. I couldn't love them any more for unearthing and producing this gem so we can see it. I cannot describe how heartening it is! For trivia nerds, at the wedding, in the band's first appearance on screen they are playing "All My Only Dreams" from TTYD. Trivia #2 - Mike, Ian's best friend (Ian Gomez), is Nia's real-life husband. Trivia #3 - despite Nia's surprising resemblance to (Italian) Marisa Tomei, a Disney branch wanted Tomei to play the part and not the autobiographical author!
Is her family (or his) a bit of a stretch of stereotypes? Who can say - heaven knows we all pretend our families are normal but to outsiders, they can appear to be this wild, this alien, even; and that is the joy. Finding the love despite the differences, seeing the families for who they are, not what they are. And reveling in their personality instead of repressing it - all makes this movie like magic.
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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