‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3‘ Captures the Charm of the Original, Inviting us Home with the Portokalos on an Adventure to the Old Country.
I owe Nia Vardalos an apology. Following ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2‘ I stated:
Now, we arrive at ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2‘, a highly anticipated sequel that gave me another chance to laugh at myself, my family and to know that living in a heavily populated Anglo area, I was not alone.
Unfortunately, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, had some funny yet forgettable moments. There were far too many throwback jokes to the original that tarnished the legacy by turning it into just an average comedy without building on the original or creating a world of new memories. It faltered just as poorly as the spin-off television series My Big Fat Greek Life did in 2003…Sadly, this is like a loose remake of Varadalos previous film, Helicopter Mom, a movie so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to write a review as I would have ripped into it, which would not have been fair to all the people that worked extremely hard in making that movie.
Vardalos has revitalized the franchise and has even set up the sequel for ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 4’! In stead of Toula (Vardalos) being a helicopter mom to Paris (Elena Kampouris), the two women develop their own relationship, even with its struggles. The throwback references to the original 2003 film fit the story this time and did not feel shoehorned in, like the sequel, which was a huge relief.
Andrea Martin as Voula stole the first two movies, however was dethroned by Anthi Andreopoulou who plays Alexandra, every Mediterranean person’s scary relative that shows up everywhere out of nowhere, is mean as heck, but somehow is also the most helpful person. Alexis Georgoulis is a great addition to the cast after having worked with Vardalos on, ‘My Life in Ruins‘.
Sadly, we lost actor Michael Constantine who played Gus, allowing my ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3‘ to be a fitting tribute to his memory by taking the entire family to his small mountain village, in search of his childhood friends and sharing his American story. It’s what almost every immigrant parent dreams of doing, but most never get the chance to return home.
The nitpicking part on my end is that in the Greek Orthodox Church we are now allowed to cremate the dead, so technically, Gus is in Hell, but Westerners don’t know that about our tradition and it works for the sequences of the film. Also, Ian Miller (John Corbett) befriends a hermit monk and shakes his hand instead of kissing it. After having converted to Orthodoxy, the character of Ian Miller should have known better when coming to greeting clergy. One final thing, a character with “questionable lineage” tries to execute a position of moral superiority, which again, is only problematic if you know the full cultural context, but again works well for the film.
‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3‘ also touches on the immigrant and refugee crisis with the influx of Syrians and Ukrainians to Greece, which only adds to the richness of the film.
‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3‘ takes us home to the Mediterranean on Friday, September 8, 2023.
Summary
‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3’ captures the charm of the original while erasing the memory of the blunder that was the second film in the franchise.
