My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 – Review

Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 32 minutes, Director – Nia Vardalos

The Portokalos family heads to Greece for a reunion in their recently-passed father’s home village

If you haven’t seen any of the previous two My Big Fat Greek Wedding films, or, like me, can’t remember a great deal about either of them, good luck knowing who anyone is for the first 10-15 minutes of the film. It’s a quick trip to Greece as everyone is grouped up, seemingly whittled down, and the core members are on board the flight ready to travel to recently-passed head-of-the-family Gus’ home village for a reunion of his childhood friends. However, they’re greeted by a village of six people, and no sign of anyone for the reunion.

Toula (Nia Vardalos – returning to write, and stepping into the director’s chair) is intent on handing over her father’s journal (filled with enough paper and photots to make it a coffee table book) to his old friends, the strand which takes up most of the 92-minute run-time. Meanwhile, each member of the family gets their own thing to cut back and forth between throughout the film. Brother Nick (Louis Mandylour) seems obsessed with finding the oldest tree in the village while daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) – having not told her parents that she’s failed her first year of college – is dealing with the fact that her aunts (Andrea Martin, Maria Vacratsis) have somehow invited date-gone-wrong Aristotle (Elias Kacavas) along for the holiday. And, just to give him something to do, husband Ian (John Corbett) wanders off to briefly spend time with a monk.

Each character is generally given something to do throughout the narrative but things never quite seem to stick together. There’s a distance between the segments as if some of the side-events are there simply so characters have something to do and aren’t completely forgotten about whilst Toula tries to make the reunion happen, with the help of only-one-who-voted mayor Victory (Melina Kotselou). Other strands pop up here and there to try and build-up to one big, fat, Greek finale but there’s no real unity in the build-up.

While watchable and likable in parts, particularly thanks to the scenery – which the actors definitely drink in as they walk through each frame with huge smiles spread across their faces – things falter with the addition of the humour. Despite a couple of laughs here and there there aren’t enough to keep things properly going. A good deal of gags fail to get a response, often simply down to feeling tired. The cast may be having a good time, and to an extent helping things move along that bit more easily thanks to this, but overall there’s not enough connected substance, or laughs, to properly lift the film up and make it connect.

Despite each character have just about something to do nothing really feels connected the the build-up to the finale of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. It might be generally watchable in parts, but the often tired laughs falter throughout.