My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 Review

From its humble origins as an independent rom-com, My Big Fat Greek Wedding receives a third film. This time many members of the Portokalos family are going to Greece.

The Portokalos family is in a state of flux. The family patriarch has passed away and Maria Portokalos (Lainie Kazan) starts to suffer from dementia. Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Nick (Louis Mandylor) set out to fulfil their late father’s last wishes and take his childhood diary back to his home village. This pilgrimage marks the first time many members of the Portokalos clan go to Greece.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a sleeper hit back in 2002. It made $368.7 million from a $5 million budget and it was a delightful rom-com that looked at Greek-American culture. It was a funny film but it seemed like an unlikely candidate to have a sequel, let alone two. It took 14 years for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 to be released, and another six for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was one of those sequels where if the filmmakers ran out of ideas they took the characters abroad for an adventure. It ended up being like two similar films, the Downton Abbey movie, and Book Club: The Next Chapter. All aim to be cosy, comfort viewing.

Like Book Club: The Next Chapter, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 felt like it was a collaboration of a nation’s tourism ministry. Book Club: The Next Chapter showed characters going to some of Italy’s major tourist destinations, and My Big Greek Wedding 3 did the same for Greece. When the Portokalos drove around Athens and saw some of the capital’s major sites like the Parthenon and the Greek Parliament in what felt like a big detour to the ferry port. When the Portokalos family arrived on the island they saw picturesque beaches, hills, olive groves, and villages and every Greek person was welcoming. The locals gave the Portokalos family food and were shown to be accommodating to refugees arriving on the island.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 had less of a plot than previous films. My Big Fat Greek Wedding and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 centred on a relationship and built up to a wedding. My Big Greek Wedding 3 was a collection of subplots and this was where the comparisons were with the Downton Abbey movie since that was a collection of subplots masquerading as a movie. In this threequel Toula was searching for her father’s old friends who had moved away, Chris was looking for the oldest tree on the island, Toula’s daughter, Paris (Elena Kampouris) was hiding that she was struggling at college, and there was a forbidden romance amongst the locals. There were plot points that would have fitted in a soap. This made My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 more like a paid vacation for the actors, which was nice for them, but it was paid for by the audience.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was aimed at an older female audience, and on that front it succeeded. The audience I was with enjoyed it and I did chuckle a few times during the film. The punchlines were predictable but done well enough which was fine for a light comedy.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 came out in a year where there have been numerous films about immigration across the generations. The animated films Elemental and Puffin Rock and the New Friends showed families settling in new communities, and Polite Society and It Lives Inside were about the generational and cultural divide between first-generation immigrants and their children. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 stood out because it was about the second and third generations coming to their ancestral home and getting spiritually closer to their father. It was a nice little addition theme to the family as Toula and Chris go on their personal quests.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a harmless, inoffensive little film. There wasn’t much of a story or deep meaning to it, but the intended audience would like the pretty scenery and light-hearted nature.