BEFORE: Friday was another day spent recovering, trying to merge my body with the recliner somehow, dehydrated from zinc tablets and cough drops and subsisting on the occasional ramen soup or glass of apple juice. The TV lineup included "The Seven-Percent Solution", "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", "The Birds", "Talladega Nights" and the first two episodes of Marvel's "Agent Carter" series. Finally, after midnight came this film, neatly timed for Valentine's Day - the original plan was to watch "Crimes of the Heart", but in the end maybe this is more appropriate.
"The Heartbreak Kid" begins with a wedding, so it's a nice tie-in (and I've got more wedding-themed movies coming up later in February), but I can't recall the indirect linking that prompted me to put this film here. Cybill Shepherd was also in a film called "Expecting Mary" with Lainie Kazan, was that it? (or was it Doris Roberts voicing a character in "The Secret of NIMH 2" with Andrea Martin?)
THE PLOT: A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.
AFTER: We live in an age of cynicism, when everyone is in doubt of how "authentic" things are. Perhaps when a respected newsman fudges details about his experiences in a war that was questionable in the first place, there's a need for such inquiry. I just saw two commercials, one where McDonald's felt the need to explain the meaning of "100% all-beef patties" and another for a chocolate company offering "really real" chocolate. As opposed to what, exactly?
Of course, you don't expect a romantic comedy to be held to high standards of realism, it only needs to tell a good story. But when ethnicity is involved, and it's so easy to fall back on cultural stereotypes, I have to wonder how authentic something like this is. I admit I didn't know much about Greek culture before this, other than the names of a few foods like spanakopita and dolmades, but according to the stereotypes, they have large families, drink ouzo and shout "Opa!" a lot, and this film does nothing to dispel those stereotypes, choosing to showcase them instead.
I don't mean to harp on this, but what if the film had been called "My Big Fat African-American Wedding", and it depicted a large family where everyone drank malt liquor and ate fried chicken and watermelon? Not cool, right? Or what if it was "My Big Fat German Wedding", and everyone wore lederhosen, ate sausages, drank beer and listened to oompah music? Sure, stereotypes might come from something real, but reducing an ethnic group to a bunch of cartoonish characters doesn't seem like a fair deal. So I wonder if Greek people are offended by this film, or if they think, "Yeah, that's what my family is like!"
That said, it's a fine romance depicted here, but as a chick film it also resembles what I call "porn for women". Which doesn't mean it's x-rated, I mean it shows a fairly shy, frumpy woman who comes out of her shell, and then meets a hunky guy who falls head-over-heels for her, to the point where he's willing to put up with her obnoxious family and even convert to her religion, so they can get married and have an ideal life. I won't say it couldn't happen, but it also smacks of fantasy - like those old ZZ Top videos that were aimed at teen boys, where a muscle car would roll up with three leggy women inside, grabbing a teen away from his gas station job for, one assumes, a wild week of sex and debauchery. Hey, that band knew their audience.
But hey, anyone who's gotten married can understand the differences between two families, especially when religious or cultural differences are involved. I just think the film got too specific in that sense. We spent a couple years going out to my brother-in-law's in-laws' place for Thanksgiving, and they're straight-up Sicilian, so I get some of the stuff about cultural differences. I can even say a couple of really nasty curses in Sicilian now.
Also starring Nia Vardalos (last heard in "Larry Crowne"), John Corbett (last seen in "Tombstone"), Michael Constantine, Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin (last heard in "Anastasia"), Gia Carides, Joey Fatone (last seen in "The Cooler"), Ian Gomez (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Bruce Gray, Fiona Reid.
RATING: 4 out of 10 bottles of Windex
This one was on my "keep watching it until I figure out what I think is wrong with it" playlist. I eventually hit on two big problems:
ReplyDelete1) Her fiancé is a total doormat. He's so utterly one-note in his adoration of Nia Vardalos' character that there's an argument to be made that in reality, she was in a car wreck several months earlier and we're seeing the fantasy world that her brain has been weaving for her since she lapsed into a coma. He's pure fanfic.
But this is minor compared to the big problem:
2) The whole first 15 minutes of the movie needs to go.
The story doesn't start until she's working in her aunt's travel agency. This isn't a movie about how this woman burst out of her cocoon at age 30...this is the story about the stress of getting into a relationship with a non-Greek man and how her crazy family reacts to that and plans an over-the-top wedding. Lop off everything that takes place before that story starts, replace it with about two minutes of narrated montage/flashbacks, and you won't miss it at all.
On top of that...the first 15 minutes are full of things that I just couldn't buy, not for ten seconds. I didn't buy that she wore the same eyeglass frames at 30 that she wore at age 8, I didn't buy that she'd never experimented with makeup, I didn't buy that she instantly developed a cohesive fashion sense after decades of wearing frumpy monochrome outfits and unwashed, unbrushed hair.
Also, her whole costume and makeup in this section are pretty bad. It's not a believable character; it's clearly the result of "frumping someone down" to make her "transformation" seem that much more incredible.
But! Cut the whole first fifteen minutes, and the problem goes away. Literally!
This isn't a great movie. But it's fun, and it's charming.