My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Fourteen years later, I remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding as charming, hilarious, warm romantic comedy romp that, considering I’m not usually a fan of romcoms, actually didn’t turn my stomach. The big family aspect was familiar, but the culture was different enough to be interesting.  I remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a big phenom, considering that Nia Vardalos not only wrote, but played the starring role. It was another “revelation” that women could be funny.

I giggled maybe a handful of times during the 94 minutes while my expectations tied a rock around its leg and dived off a cliff. The characters and storyline have no integrity. As you would expect characters face internal dilemmas and external conflict; and as you would expect, all as resolved by the end of the film. However, the problems are dissolved at such a breakneck pace, there’s never any tension.

Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 catches up with Toula (Nia Vardalos), Ian (John Corbett), and their teenage daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) who is in her Senior year of high school. Toula is terrified of who she will be without her daughter and her relationship with Ian, despite love, is growing stale. Paris is embarrassed by her smothering family and is determined to go to school as far away as possible. Paris is accepted into NYU and despite her repeated insistence she needs to be free of them, for whatever reason, she tells her parents that she’ll stay in Chicago. Then, just as mystifyingly, tells them j/k, she’s going to NYU.

Gus (Michael Constantine) and Maria (Lainie Kazan) discover they were never properly married in the church. Gus thinks it will be an easy fix, but Maria is hesitant, rethinking her life in service to the restaurant and to Gus as a wife. Eventually, everything rights itself until the actual ceremony where Gus and his friends show up drunk. Disgusted, Maria leaves him at the altar and makes several valid points, questioning the value of marriage to Gus. In nearly the same breath, with out any work or apology from Gus, she decides her thankless work is all ok because she loves him; besides, she’s old and who else could she possibly find? Maria compromises, settles, and it's played as a romantic event, when in reality it’s incredibly bleak and very disappointing.

Other conflicts seem shoehorned in just to be resolved. Gus and his brother have held each other in disdain since Gus moved to the U.S. fifty years prior. The resentment is deep seated and has stewed over oceans for decades, but when Gus’ brother shows up for the wedding their issues evaporate in the only scene they share together.

What was the point? Why bother building the tension if only to cut off its feet? The quarrels, disputes, and disagreements are not solved nor worked through, they’re just suddenly OK for some indiscernible reason. The writing is lazy, confusing, infuriating, and lacks any humor. Jokes are telegraphed or just flat and lack any surprise.

I didn’t expect a heavy drama to sink my teeth into. I don’t require a deep analysis of how marriage is better for men than for women. I don’t need monologues as to why being independent is important. However, if you present these to me, I do expect you to explore them and actually consider them with a bit of consequence and to make me feel like these conflicts matter in the context.

MBFGW2 is the cinematic version of Easter’s cruelest candy, the hollow chocolate bunny. I expected a light, sweet romantic film full of laughs and large characters, wrapped in the warmth of family, but when the surface was cracked, there was nothing inside.