My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Sounds like a complaint rather than a movie title. There is, however, very little to complain about in this movie. It centers around the life of Toula Portokalos, played by Nia Vardalos, a “nice Greek girl” as her father Gus Portokalos, played by Michael Constantine, calls her. He also says to her many times “You look old, you should get married to a nice Greek boy.” At the beginning of the movie, Toula is a waitress at her family’s restaurant; she is kind of frumpy looking with straight hair, glasses and generally what I call “old-woman” clothes. One fateful day she encounters Ian Miller, played by John Corbett, who meets a friend at Toula’s family restaurant. Ian’s friend keeps trying to set him up with women; in fact, Toula first catches his eye while his friend is going over snapshots of women. Ian’s quote to his friend is that that all the women he sees are boring and predictable. Toula, when she first sees Ian is speechless and overwhelmed that he even looks at her. She has always been the other sister as her sister is the pretty one. Soon she convinces her father that she needs to go to college downtown to take computer classes to help run the family restaurant and also adopts a better haircut, a better wardrobe and contacts. As one might expect from the title, Toula eventually marries Ian, although Gus puts Toula through the guilt-grinder because Ian is not Greek. But her mother Maria Portokalos, played by Lainie Kazan, sets Gus straight. As she says in the movie: “The man may be the head of the family, but we women are the neck… and the neck can make the head turn any way it wants.”
The laughs never stop in this one - whether it is from the aside monologues about every situation, comments about her love-guilt-embarrassment relationship with her family, or the situations she is put into by her family members. Gus believes that ANY malady can be cured by applying Windex - anything from a wart to arthritis to minor burns. Her mother gives her advice on her wedding day “Greek women, we may be lambs in the kitchen, but we are tigers in the bedroom!” Her aunt, played by former Second City comedienne Andrea Martin is absolutely hilarious with quotes like “What do you mean, you don’t eat no meat? … That’s okay. I’ll make lamb.” The latest info says that a follow-up TV series is in the works titled “My Big Fat Greek Life” and they have all the major players in the movie except for John Corbett. All in all I was not expecting it to be such a pleasant experience. I rate it an 8.
