Opa!

What a fun movie!  My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the kind of movie I was starting to think Hollywood had forgotten how to make - personal stories about ordinary people living their lives, changing their lives, and being interesting and funny in the process. 

The plot is simplicity itself - girl meets boy, girl marries boy, everybody dances.  But what a fun journey through this unpretentious plot!

As the story opens, Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos, who also wrote the script) is a first generation Greek-American, 30 years old, single, still living with her parents and working at the family restaurant, Dancing Zorba's.   Father Gus (Michael Constantine) is a fanatic on the superiority of Greeks to every other culture.   Mother Maria (Lainie Kazan) cooks and cooks and cooks and allows Gus to believe he makes all the decisions. 

Toula, well, bless her heart, she's a frump. Baggy clothes, glasses, long straight hair, she just doesn't 'do' anything with herself.  Her huge, meddlesome family embarrasses her.  The Portokalos clan is one of those large, warm, loud, 'ethnic' families that are either embracing or smothering, depending on your point of view or even your mood.   Toula is too close to them to see the charm. 

 But Toula just up and decides to change.  Step one is taking computer classes at the university.  And she fixes herself up.  Not the unrealistic movie glamour of ugly duckling into swan, more like ugly duckling into pretty duck. Contact lenses and more flattering clothes, but not overnight glamour girl. 

Toula convinces her Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) to give her a job at her travel agency.  It's fun watching Toula in her new job, talking into her headset, ticking on her computer, wheeling around in her desk chair - she's having a blast. 

And!  She meets a guy! 

We've seen him walking through the neighborhood a few times, and Toula has certainly noticed him as well - he seems so nice, and so not Greek.  This is Ian Miller (John Corbett), a teacher at the local high school. 

Toula and Ian start dating on the sly.  (Why on the sly?  Because he's not Greek!)  The things about her life Toula despises as 'different', Ian enjoys as 'interesting'.  His life was boring before he met her. 

In his own way, Ian is as much the family oddball as Toula is in hers.  He was supposed to be a lawyer, like his father and grandfather, but became a teacher instead.  And he's perfect for Toula, calm and easy-going, a welcome respite from her family's constant turbulence. 

Perfect?  What do you mean, perfect?!  He's not Greek!  No one in Toula's family has ever married a non-Greek.  As she tells Ian rather hysterically, "Greeks marry Greeks to breed more Greeks to be loud, breeding, Greek eaters."

Eventually, the family catches on to Toula's romance.  And so the parade of 'nice Greek boys' begins through the Portokalos family dining room.  Sheesh - is this the best they can come up with?  No wonder Toula is still single!

But Ian proposes and Toula accepts.  More loud family hysterics before the family decides to welcome Ian into the family in their own special way.  As Toula's brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) tells Ian, "I've never seen my sister so happy.  And if you hurt her, I'll kill you and make it look like an accident."

And then it's on to the preparation for the titular Big Fat Greek Wedding, the cooking, the dresses, the invitations - all performed and argued over by large crowds of highly emotional people living large.  And the wedding itself and the happily ever after. 

I've just told you the entire plot; can the movie possibly still be enjoyable?  Oh, you bet it can!   This is one of those movies that moviegoers walk out of the theater quoting to one another. 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding has an unusual creation story.  It is based on the one-woman stage show of actress-writer-comedian Nia Vardalos, which she based on her own wedding to a non-Greek.  (In fact, Ian's best friend Mike is played by Vardolos' real-life husband Ian Gomez.)   The show was seen by Tom Hank's wife Rita Wilson, who lobbied her husband for a movie version, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Filmed on a shoestring, made a bundle of money - are you paying attention, Hollywood?  More movies like this, please.

This one's a keeper.



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