My Big Fat Greek Con
I have never given dating advice in any movie review I have ever written, but this is an exception. Gentlemen and crude pigs, listen up and listen good. If a woman tells you that she loves this train wreck of a “film,” run. Just run, you are wasting your freaking time. This, as far as I know of, was the ultimate, “let’s make asses out of people,” flick. It probably surpasses The Blair Witch Project in pure making fools out of the public. Seriously, the size and scale of this con job is impressive even by Hollywood standards.
This movie is just offensively dumb, dumb and dumb. The pilot makes no sense, and is completely unrealistic. Most of why people bought this mound of crap was that they believed the sales pitch that it was a “independent film” much along the lines of The Blair Witch Project or El Mariachi. Please, let’s just start with the budgets. My Big Fat Greek Wedding had a budget in the range of at least $5 million and perhaps $10 million dollars, as compared to The Blair Witch Project and El Mariachi which were both a FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS! But that is how the Machiavellian executives sold it. Further, Tom Hanks and his wife were producers and the director, Joel Zwick is a very well known old school director who has directed literally a ton of television shows from Happy Days to Perfect Strangers to Full House and on and on. This was not a bunch of nobodies with a camcorder, however, this is EXACTLY how the film was sold to the public.
Alright so what is this turkey about? It is the silly, manipulative yawn of an rather average (I am being nice here) Greek woman who somehow and inexplicably gets a rather good looking guy played by John Corbett to fall in love with her and throw a ring on her finger. The family is opposed because he isn’t Greek, whatever, how many times can that story be told and sold? Yikes!
The acting is barely D grade, at best and a pro like Corbett seems out of place. The star and writer of this masterpiece is Nia Vardalos, who can barely act and whose screenplay, well I think you know where I stand. Look, the Hollywood powers that be, actually tried to push her out there as something of a sex symbol. That was unkind to all involved and I am not trying to be mean here, it was uncool to Vardalos as well. As for the rest of the cast, really some sub par stuff here and lots of cliched, predictable crap, which is largely Vardalos script at work.
I know there must be more to this story than I am covering here. There must be an explanation of how all of this came to be. I know there is a back story that must explain this absurdity. But one thing is for sure this movie should have never made somewhere around $350 million worldwide. That frightens me for the future of the species. The vast majority of those amazing profits were here in the States, and I blame the educational system. The film made money because women around America were scammed into going to see it. Now, this is simply the truth, while men were in the audience, they were not the ones the con job was aimed at, they were simply dragged to it. This is not to say that guys don’t get snookered into going to see crap, look at NASCAR, enough said.
Ultimately, I did not think there was anything cute or original or innovative or sassy or anything else of value in this script, the performances or the worn out cliches that insult their audience. Yes, it made money, but all sorts of horrible things have made money throughout history. The fact that people swallowed this does not bode well for the future of cinema, as the studio executives must be saying, “these people will eat anything.” Films like My Big Fat Greek Wedding can only lower the bar for entertainment and prompt Hollywood to produce even lower quality entertainment than they already do. Sure most of reality television is bad, but if film industry professionals want to bitch about something, bitch about crap like this.
Story F- (The rarest of birds the F- is reserved for films that I deem as actually harming cinema and, although it sounds comical, our society. Expect to see an overall lowering of quality at a theater near you as a result of this one.)
Acting D+ (The plus is out of kindness for John Corbett, who I assume needed the money.)
Visuals F (Flatter than Kansas. Awkward shots, boring shots, cliched shots. Honestly, I have seen microbudget films with far better cinematography. I am dead serious.)
Originality/Innovation F
Enjoyability Grade F
Home Theater/HD Factor F (You don’t need to see Vardalos in HD it is unfair to her and it is unfair to you. Period. Don’t you do it.)
Overall Grade F (I didn’t even get into the topic of how this harms women and holds them back. I’m sure all involved think it empowers women. It does not. One cannot empower via a cliche. This script should have never been given a single dollar, much less $5 million or $6 million or $8 million or whatever the true final budget may have been. Could I do better? Folks with a little practice and time almost all of us could have done something at least a little better. One of the worst major studio releases ever made, avoid this film.)
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