My Big Fat Greek Wedding – 4 stars (excellent)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is simply one of the best movies ever made about close families and their traditions.

This film is on par with Fiddler on the Roof (winner of 3 Oscars out of 8 nominations) and A Christmas Story (winner of no major awards and no Oscar nominations), proving that the biggest winners are not the only great movies. .

A Christmas Story and My Big Fat Greek Wedding coincided with bookends in that typical Hollywood backers did not think both films were worthy of funding and ended up as independent films with limited distribution before becoming blockbusters.

A Christmas Story, a low-budget film that was not expected to perform well, was released just before Thanksgiving in 1983. By Christmas, the film had been pulled from theaters because it was thought to have been ” interpreted “. It was only due to viewers’ complaints that he came back to life and has since developed a loyal group of fans who will not let him die.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was filmed because a brave Greek girl named Nia Vardalos believed in herself and her one-woman show to keep performing until Rita Wilson saw the play. She convinced her husband Tom Hanks to produce a film version.

Wilson, like Vardalos, is Greek. Wilson’s reward as one of the producers with her husband and Gary Goetzman was seeing the project completed. The PGA Golden Laurel Awards remembered Rita Wilson by awarding her the Visionary Award in 2003. All three producers also won the Golden Laurel Award for Producer of the Year.

So we have in My Big Fat Greek Wedding a low-budget indie movie that was about to make Hollywood history.

To show you how dumb Hollywood financial backers were and how smart Tom Hanks was, the estimated $ 5 million budget for My Big Fat Greek Wedding generated worldwide revenue of $ 368 million.

Hollywood sponsors thought that American moviegoers would not accept an ethnic film. I wonder how many of the same backers recognized that Fiddler on the Roof, produced 31 years earlier in 1971, was an ethnic film about a Jewish family that broke with the tradition of arranged marriages.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) became the highest grossing independent film of all time, beating The Blair Witch Project (1999). It also became the highest grossing film ever to reach number one at the box office, beating out Dances with Wolves (1990).

Unbelievably, the movie was still running in various theaters even after its initial video release.

This movie is essentially the story of Toula (Nia Vardalos), a 30-year-old Greek woman who falls in love with John (Ian Miller), a non-Greek man, and fights for his family to accept him while both of them accept their heritage, identity. cultural and mutual compatibility.

As Toula says, “Nice Greek girls are supposed to do three things in life: marry Greek boys, have Greek babies, and feed everyone … Until the day we die.”

His father, Gus Portokalos (Michael Constantine) says, “You better get married soon. You’re starting to look old!” Gus also says: “There are only two types of people, Greeks and people who wish they were Greek.” He believes that any ailment can be cured with Windex.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is Greek community at its finest and best, all suffocating love, demanded tradition, guilt motivation, male ego, female influence, race pride, sibling ties , extended family, romance and sacrifice for those. we love.

This film is neither heavy nor full of drama, it is a romantic comedy mixed with strong family traditions that demonstrates Shakespeare’s wise observation that “all is well if it ends well.”

The cast isn’t star-studded and proves that you don’t have to be a headliner to deliver a headlining performance and something else. Joining Nia Vardalos, Michael Constantine, and Ian Miller with significant and meaningful contributions were Lainie Kazan as Toula’s mother, Maria, Louis Mandylor as Toula’s brother Nick, Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula, and Gia Carides as cousin Nikki.

Vardalos, Constantine, Mandylor, and Carides were the only true Greeks in the cast.

There is a moment in the film where Toula feels like she is losing the battle and laments that “the man is the head of the house.” Her mother Maria tells her that “the man is the head, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn her head as she wants.” Maria does it in a confrontation with her husband that should make women proud.

This movie will warm your heart, entertain your soul, and make you leave a better person for having seen this magnificent endeavor in filmmaking. Toula’s personal growth as a young woman breaking free from forced expectations in the face of unbearable odds is so valuable that you want to take her home and adopt her.

I once went to a Polish funeral and was amazed that when the funeral ended and the reception began, the whiskey flowed and the entire immediate family and friends had a great party drinking, dancing and singing.

I learned more about family traditions in different cultures at that Polish funeral. Some cultures celebrate the life of a loved one after the funeral.

Despite the complications presented in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you leave wanting to be Greek because you see the love and fun that they have far more than any disagreement or disappointment.

The interaction between Toula and her brother Nick is really sweet, heartwarming, and fun.

At one point, Nick is impressed with Toula’s ability to break with tradition (he secretly wants to study art) and says, “Don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be a part of who you will become.” “Nick, that’s beautiful,” Toula replies, to which Nick adds, “Yes, dear Abby really knows what she’s talking about.”

Nia Vardalos wrote the script and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, was nominated for 6 other minor screenplay awards and won 2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is directed by Joel Zwick, who won two minor awards for his effort. I feel like it deserved more recognition.

The film attracted little attention among the top honorees, but it appropriately won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Comedy. Almost as an afterthought, My Big Fat Greek Wedding won the Best Independent Comedy Film award from the US Comedy Arts Festival. It would be my pleasure if some of the judges for the Comedy Film Award were Greek.

There is Greek love throughout this movie, from the vision of Rita Wilson to the thousands of Greek Americans who said, hey, this is Greek, this is good. The Greek community really made the movie a box office record, while we non-Greeks joined in later and enjoyed the movie.

When I left the theater, I went to fetch ouzo, the anise-flavored Greek liqueur so celebrated in the film at Greek gatherings. They would have a drink of ouzo and shout “oumpa.”

I married a girl from a very traditional Italian Catholic family. Every Christmas my wife makes Italian cookies with anise flavored frosting, no wonder I loved My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Anyone who wants a job watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding must be Greek, love ouzo, and have fun. Others don’t need to apply unless of course they want to be Greek, they want to try ouzo and have fun!

Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley