My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is yet another visit to the Portokalos family, but does it have hidden depths, asks Simon Morris?
Full disclosure, I found the original, hugely successful My Big Fat Greek Wedding alarmingly flimsy when it came out in 2002.
It was the semi-autobiographical account of writer-star Nia Vardalos’s love and marriage to a non-Greek chap called Ian.
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And it depended almost entirely on the appeal of the character Toula Portokalos’s colourful – some might say obnoxious – family.
Produced by Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, Greek wedding 1 was a sensation.
The inevitable but pointless sequel was less so, and now a third one, you’d think, must be trying the patience of the biggest fans of Greek weddings, no matter how fat.
So how are Toula and Ian possibly going to get married a third time? Well, OK, there may be a little poetic license going on here.
The plot – though I suspect Aristotle might quibble over that description of what’s on offer in Wedding Number 3 – involves the happy couple going to Greece, in search of Toula’s late father’s roots. Whatever that means.
And while there isn’t room on the flight for Toula’s entire family - who seemed to run into the dozens in the last film – there’s certainly room for the most annoying ones.
These include Toula’s brother Nick and a couple of butt-inski aunts. And somehow Toula’s daughter Paris and her ex, whose name, coincidentally, is Aristotle.
Like the previous films, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 has an optimistic idea of what counts as a fully rounded character.
Mostly they’re just a series of catch-phrases – like Victory, the young mayor of the village.
There comes a time when you think if you hear the expression “Number One The Best” one more time you’ll scream. Or brother Nick’s habit of pointing out that something was originally Greek all the time.
Or the aunts doing that lovable ethnic-aunt thing, all trying to disguise the fact that nothing seems to be actually happening.
Apart from anything else, there’s certainly very little sign of a Greek wedding of any size for most of the film.
Mostly it’s Toula pottering about looking for Dad’s remaining old childhood friends, if any, for a family reunion which seems – by Portokalos standards – remarkably under-populated.
There is a tiny bit of will they/won’t they among the young folk, though a wedding there seems highly unlikely.
Otherwise, nothing much to see. Writer and now director Vardalos seems to have an almost pathological fear of startling us.
And yet, despite all this, I had rather a good time. After all, for an hour and a half I was visiting one of the most picturesque places on earth.
So, for most of the film, I ignored the twittering of what passed for the plot to admire the sea, the islands, the wonderful food and the historic buildings.
Frankly the activities of the Portokalos family were no more of an imposition than any other fellow tourists when you go on a trip to Greece.
They didn’t interfere with me, I didn’t interfere with them.
In the end, there’s a bit of a farewell party – and yes, belatedly they find a couple somewhere who can get married at it. There’s food, there’s dancing, there are a lot of people calling out “Opa!”
In other words, it’s not so much a movie as a Mediterranean holiday. And after a long, bleak winter who could possibly complain about that?