Rating- * * * (3/5)
My video rental odyssey continues with this film, probably the most talked about film of 2002 and certainly the most profitable. If you don’t know the back story behind this film, I suppose I will tell you but you really must not watch TV ever. Writer and star Nia Vardalos started her career as a performer in Chicago’s famous Second City Theater, home of John Belushi, Mike Myers, Chris Farley and many other great comic faces of our time. While there, Vardalos developed a one woman show based on her real life. Legend has it that Rita Wilson saw the show and convinced her husband, Tom Hanks, to produce a movie of it. The movie started off as a limited release romantic-comedy and over the summer snowballed into the movie event of the year, making over $100 million (impressive, since it cost only $6 million to make). The story follows Toula (Vardalos), a 30 year old Chicago woman who still lives with her Greek family. To say that her family is eccentric would be like saying Saddam Hussein is mean. They live in a house designed to look like the Parthenon and have a Greek flag painted on their garage door. Toula is a disappointment to her family since she never married or had any Greek babies, the aim of every Greek woman’s life. One day, she meets an intelligent, funny guy named Ian Miller (John Corbett). Toula and Ian begin to fall for one another but there is one major problem; Ian is not even a little Greek, a fact that does not go over well with Toula’s family. After avoiding the meeting for weeks, Toula finally introduces Ian to her family; her father (Michael Constantine), whose solution to any problem is to spray Windex on it, her mother (Lainie Kazan), who says things like “when I was a child we didn’t have food!” and the other thirty or so cousins and aunts that are always hanging around. The family looks like one of those characters you always see in romantic comedies that scream out “this is the comedy part!” There are a few good laughs from the family, but don’t see this movie if you’re looking for comedy. The real star of this movie is Vardalos who pulls off a sort of Cinderella makeover and has a very cute, sweet demeanor about her that makes us pull for her the whole movie. Corbett is pretty good as the charming Ian and the two leads have a good chemistry together. The movie works as a sweet, light-hearted romance, struggles as a comedy and is ultimately a little bland as a movie. I’m sure most girls will like it and it might be a good date movie but I can’t recommend it otherwise.