By Joel Zwick, 2002.
Starring Gia Carides, Michael Constantine, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan, Nia Vardalos.
Rating: 8/10, 5.5/10.
I went into My Big Fat Greek Wedding with a lot of doubts. Maybe it’s snooty of me, but when things come out of nowhere and become pop phenomenons overnight like this did, I tend to think they’re going to be bad. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that, no, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is not bad; in fact, it’s pretty damned good. Not as good as everyone said, but good.
It’s charming, inoffensive (in a good way), one might even say delightful. True, there were a couple moments in it that made me vomit, and whoever wrote the disgraceful, overly sappy music should be shot and not allowed a proper burial, but all in all, it was a fun and light time. Vardalos has herself some talent, both in writing and in acting, though I do wonder if anything else good could ever come of her. Something this clearly "my life equals my movie" seems kind of irreproducible. But who knows. Kazan and Constantine, as Vardalos’ parents, are comic geniuses, especially in the scene where they meet the groom’s parents for the first time ("It’s a bundt!"), so much so that I weep at the thought of them on that crappy sitcom they made out of this that’s probably been canceled many times over already. And no, that doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t go out of my way to praise My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again, I certainly wouldn’t buy it. But it was fun while it was happening, and I suppose I could say I’m happy I saw it.