Hollywood is always hoping to create lightning in a bottle again and again. With movies geting more and more expensive to make, it is taking a toll on creativity. This is nothing new, of course, but it is becoming more and more blatant lately, with films that are becoming more and more predictable, vanilla, and dull. In 2002, the original My Big Fat Greek Wedding grossed almost $369 million dollars, making it, at the time, the most profitable movie ever made until Paranormal Activity came along. This, of course, spawned a short-lived TV series and now, this sequel.
The premise is actually pretty good. Toula (Nia Vardelos) and her husband Ian (John Corbett) now have a daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) who is getting ready to graduate high school. In a parallel to her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), she is having a hard time letting her child go. Meanwhile, her mother Maria (Lainie Kazan) and Gus realize their original marriage certificate was not signed by the priest due to the chaos of WWII in Greece, so they are not technically married. What follows is that Maria and Gus decide to get married again in the big, Greek style we saw in the first film.
The movie works overall, but the problem is that some of it seems forced. The overall idea that Maria and Gus aren't married gives a nice counterpoint to their badgering of Toula and now Paris to get married ais that Gus and Maria are, technically, living in sin. But there is not enough new life in the story to warrant a new film. Now, don't get me wrong. The story is charming, and like the first one, at its core, it demonstrates the wonderfulness and agony and, ultimately, importance of family. It is a very sweet message and is just as earnest as the last movie, but it falls sort for original material. And what is original seems shoehorned in to placate modern sensibilities. For instance, the most glaring example is making a previously established heterosexual character suddenly switch sides. Now, I don't have a particular problem with homosexual characters, but this introduction felt forced and not organic to the story at all. It felt like a Sesame Street lecture on the importance of treating everyone well and therefore takes us out of the main story in an odd way. It feels like it doesn't belong and was added as an afterthought.
The humor, while continuing with a light touch on the eccentricities of a first-generation immigrant family against white picket fence suburbia, is mostly a retread of what we have already seen before, except it is now young Paris who is looking "old" as her grandparents continually say, code for homely, which Kampouris is neither. The ctricism sounds a little mean to heap on a seventeen-year-old girl. Many of the same old jokes come up again, from Greeks eating a lot, to their smothering love for their family members. However, that is not to say the film is bad. It is still, at its core, a very sweet story about very likable and relatable people. Every actor has returned to reprise their roles, and they all shine. This movie would not have worked if they hadn't. So go see it with lowered expectations, but I think you will still be entertained.
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