My Big Fat Greek Wedding | | Cast : | Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine | | Director : | Joel Zwick | | Studio : | HBO Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | August 02, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | February 08, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), Greek (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 22, 2005 | | Summary | WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME | Content
 | I vote this as one of the worst movies of ALL TIME. Not just because of its unfunny story, or bad acting, but because it was enormously popular, for some unknown reason. I'm still completely shocked that nearly everyone IN THE ENITRE WORLD thought this movie was hilarious. No, I'm not Greek, and no, I haven't been married. I'm sure most of the people that saw and loved this movie weren't either. I've been able to relate more to films made in the 40's set in other countries than to this rubbish. EVERY bit of this movie was nearly unwatchable. HA HA WINDEX IS FUNNY. HAHA GREEK PEOPLE ARE FUNNY. Any movie with an N'Sync member in it should be avoided, especially with that fist-clenching smug smile on his unimpressive face. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 06, 2005 | | Summary | Romantically funny! | Content
| Toula is a Greek lady, from a respected Greek family in America. Her father is a proud Greek man who believes that Windex protects skin from warts and that all Greeks must persuade non-greeks to become greeks. But Toula is an ugly, plain girl from a rather sad background. She is intelligent but never got married, therefore she works in the family restaurant. So Toula is the ugly, intelligent, geeky girl nextdoor. But when Toula meets handsome and hunky man Ian, one day while serving in her restaurant, wierd things happen.
After persuading her parents to let her take classes on computer, Toula takes a job in her aunt's travel agency. She changes her looks for the better, by using makke up and perms, and looks like a beautiful, intelligent greek lady working in her travel agency. Then one day Ian comes along.............
Taking an attraction to the new and refreshed Toula, Ian and Toula take on a romance that her cousin and father plan to twarth due to Ian being a non-greek!
My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding was a funny, romantic comedy that everyone will enjoy. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 22, 2005 | | Summary | Give me a word, any word... | Content
| Toula (Nia Vardalos) is a thirty something, single American Greek girl, and, in the eyes of her family, rapidly becoming over the hill. She herself is bored with her monotonous life, with nothing to do other than work as a waitress in her family's restaurant. One day a man walks into her restaurant and Tula's life is about to change forever. The instant attraction she feels seems to somehow give her the push she needs to climb out of her rut, and she promptly enrols on a college course, learns how to use make up and dress well and, best of all, gets a new job in her Aunts travel agency.
It is while she is working there that the stranger, Ian, reappears in her life. What follows is a heart-warming tale of two people falling in love whilst trying to overcome their differing ethnic backgrounds. Tula's family are determined she should marry a `nice Greek boy' whilst Ian's, (John Corbett), family are very uptight, middle class and horrified by Tula's outgoing, lively, loud and, above all, large family.
The show stealer is Michael Constantine as Mr Portokalos, who believes everyone secretly wants to be Greek and whose favourite occupation is to tell people the origins of words ...of course, in his eyes they all stem from the Greek language, even kimono! His other favourite pastime is using Windex cleaner for everything from cleaning to treating wounds, and recommending the same to anyone who will listen. Constantine plays this role with real humour but also pathos.
The downside of the DVD is the complete lack of extras; it doesn't even have subtitles, which is very annoying when you're hard of hearing. That apart, this is a very funny, yet touching film, that is suitable for all the family to watch.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 12, 2005 | | Summary | Best comedy ever | Content
| Watching this movie with my family was pure joy. We all laughed and sometimes, were able to relate with poor Tula's Greek family. (Though we are Asian, some of her pains of family we understood)
Growing up as an awkward girl with a family that really values their homeland, Tula was always ashamed of being Greek with a huge family. And, her parent's obvious pride in be Greek. (It really shows when their house is modeled after the Greek parthenon and their garage is painted with the Greek flag.) Always wanting to fit in with the society that she lives in today, but never being able to fully do so because all the other girls were "blond and delicate".
Finally being able to find the "perfect" man, her family disagrees. Her father being the strong opposer because he is non-Greek. The ending of this movie is perfect and shows how Tula realizes the true value of what her family is worth.
This is a movie that you will love watching over and over again, laughing at the same jokes. I highly recommend it for anybody looking for a "best comedy of the year" movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 07, 2005 | | Summary | MBFGW is more about real life than moviemaking | Content
| This isn't really a review of the movie, but how I feel the issues in the movie relate to real life situations....Many people think this movie is stereotypical or fake. I think many who are in multicultural relationships would disagree....
The commercial for this movie does something interesting. When displaying the title at the end of the commercial, the title switches from Italian to Chinese to Indian, among other cultures. This is relevant because I think the topics and feeling that both the main character and the parents go through is pretty much universal.
I guess you would have to be apart of this immigrant culture to understand this. My female cousins, all Orientals, married outside their cultural group (Polish, Scottish, Italian, Argentinian, Irish, etc.) and they all went through this. After listening to my parents, it looks like my aunts and uncles who had to deal with the foreign sons-in-laws and in-laws, also had it tough and many of them complained to their daughters on why they couldn't find a nice Asian male.
Toula is a character that seems real to me, because I have friends that are in the same boat. A friend of mine, a high powered lawyer, whose parents are Russian, is scared to death to tell her parents that her love of her life is Jewish. Another friend who is 2nd generation South African has a boyfriend who is Honduran and she feels that their relationship would kill her parents. Immigrant parents want their children to marry within their own cultural groups and it is hard for them to understand why they would go outside their culture when there are so many good Greek/Italian/Indian/WHATEVER guys that are available (at least to what they think).
Toula is a homely girl and lacks self-confidence because her whole life has been about rejecting her culture. She sees that all the pretty girls are WASPY, slim and blonde, while she is the complete opposite and this has hurt her perspective of life. However, for some reason, she wants to break out of the mold and improve herself, not to find a guy but to live her life her own way.
Of course, her parents do not see this, all she needs to do is to follow her advice and she should be happy right? This is the dilemma that many 1st/2nd generation people fall under, it is the New World/Old World conflict that many of us (including guys) can relate to.
She falls for a WASPY guy and he turns out to be nice and kind, he seems to have no bad traits. While many people may scoff at this, I also find that that men (especially my cousins-in-law) who date women outside their cultures, often have more patience and are more willing to accept a second culture than other guys. I don't really see it as much in women in my experience. However, as a movie-going experience, it may come across as pretty boring.
The secondary characters are a hoot, if not a little cartoony. Aunt Voola is played up by Andrea Martin and she has a blast playing the matter of fact aunt. Martin Constantine also does a magnificent job as Gus, Toula's father. He is stubborn and scary for Toula, but all he seems to want is to be told of stuff and have things done the right way (a funny exchange comes when Gus doesn't understand why Ian didn't ask her to go out with Toula and Ian doesn't understand why he would have to ask since she's 30 years old--A funny clash of cultures).
But the best is Maria, played by Lainie Kazan. She may be a little kooky, but she always is wise and knows what to say to make things right. She had my mother nodding in agreement throughout the whole movie when I showed it to her. Other characters like her sister, brother and cousins are merely time-fillers and have little purpose IMO.
Another set of characters that seem to be stereotyped is Ian's parents. I have met alot of ignorant WASP parents, but they seem to be charactiatures of Nia Vardalos' vision of what WASP parents are like.
So overall, I find that MBFGW to be more about real-life than about Hollywood romantic storytelling. In most movies, people meet, hook up, get engaged and get married. Opposed to movies like "How to lose a guy in 10 minutes" which has to go through a whole complicated plotline for people to fall in love. The reason why so many people watched this movie is because they could relate to the nature of this relationship and the issues that it brings. It's about a pretty homely woman who fixes herself out to turn into a regular (if not pretty) girl. She isn't a knockout, but she is interesting and different and for Ian (BTW: her real husband Ian is Mike the teacher in the movie) that is a marrying woman....Rating: B+
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