'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3' Review: A Greek Tragedy
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 could’ve been an enjoyable sequel, but it instead re-treads to distasteful and lethargic humor, essentially putting the nails in the coffin for the future of the franchise.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Whether you want it or not, a third My Big Fat Greek Wedding movie is here and sends the main characters to Greece. After Gus (Michael Constantine, who died in 2021) passes away, with his dying wish for his family to send his journal to three of his childhood friends, Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) travels to Greece with her husband, Ian (John Corbett), daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris), brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) and aunt Voula (Andrea Martin).
Arriving at the village, Toula has difficulty finding Gus’ friends and thus enlists the help of cousins Nikki (Gia Carides) and Angelo (Joey Fatone) to find them, whilst Toula’s mother (Laine Kazan) struggles to remember her children and family, showing early signs of dementia. Meanwhile, Paris starts to become romantically entwined with Voula’s helper, Aristotle (Elias Kacavas), as she hides a massive secret from her parents she is afraid they discover.
A lot happens in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, yet none feels important. Writer/star Nia Vardalos steps into the director’s chair for the first time in the franchise (though her last directorial effort, I Hate Valentine’s Day, wasn’t particularly good either) and never once makes her plot threads feel urgent. You’d think that Maria showing early signs of neurodegeneration would mean Varadalos handling the material with care and making her feel like the film's centerpiece. But more often than not, Vardalos uses Maria’s condition to crack jokes at her expense (saying she doesn’t remember who Toula is and then saying, “I’m joking! I’m joking!” when she isn’t), which feels completely distasteful instead of deepening the emotional core. The two scenes with Maria have the same framing device, and the character is never seen (or mentioned) again beyond that.
Another example of this is Paris’ secret. Now, for the two people who want to see the movie, I will not be revealing the contents of that secret, but let’s say it’s a major deal and would be pretty devastating for the Portokalos family, who has put so much faith into her. When she reveals exactly what it is to her parents, it’s essentially played for laughs (and it works, with John Corbett delivering the line of the movie), and then never gets deepened and mentioned as an important part of her arc again. It begs the question why the film bothers consistently teasing elements that are allegedly crucial to the development of the characters if they either aren’t actually essential for the progression of their respective arcs, and don’t add anything to the rest of the story?
The rest of the movie doesn’t fare well either: several homophobic and xenophobic jokes leave a rather foul taste in the mouth, frequently targeting the town’s non-binary mayor (Melina Kotselou). If Vardalos isn’t mocking neurodegenerative conditions or the LGTBTQ+ community for cheap laughs, she fills the rest of the runtime with physical comedy centered around Nick shaving all of his body parts. Even attempts at an emotional connection with the town are haphazard, especially in terms of heavy subplots: Ian spends time with a Monk, though those scenes are so fleeting that there’s no room for any exploration of character, whilst sociopolitical tensions involving a Syrian refugee entwined with a local are also explored in bad faith instead of raising its awareness thoughtfully.
Minus the colorful presence of Martin, who consistently brings her A-game as Aunt Voula (the very best character in the Greek Wedding series because she’s everyone’s aunt), none of the actors remotely care about the material present on screen, even Vardalos, who wrote the damn script. You would think she would be the film’s best part, but she plays Toula here with a lethargic energy that matches Corbett’s phoned-in demeanor as Ian (though, as mentioned above, he does get a few funny moments). None of the younger actors fare any better, and it’s such a shame.
The Portokalos family is one of the most lived-in cinematic families we’ve seen in our contemporary appreciation of romantic comedies. To see them bored out of their minds here, even when they seemingly have fun being together, feels like the biggest oxymoron imaginable. Alas, it’s only because Vardalos’ material isn’t inspiring and would instead draw cheap laughs out of precarious social subjects and health conditions against a more upbeat (and fun) adventure in Greece.
The possibilities of a Big Fat Greek Vacation are endless. Vardalos is a great writer who has proven herself in the original Greek Wedding movie to draw a compelling family comedy with well-developed characters whom you feel bad to leave while the movie ends. Each movie should feel like a family reunion, and it does when you see the characters again. However, it soon turns sour, like most family dinners usually do when we begin to talk about touchy subjects. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is exactly that, and you can’t put some Windex on it to fix its problems.