WHY WE HIRED IT

It was my daughter’s 10th birthday on April 13th and we had offered to hire a DVD for her and her three friends to watch. It had to be something the four of them agreed on and a film that was suitable for all ages (as my youngest daughter would be watching too and she’s not quite seven) and rated a U or a PG.

So hubby dutifully took the assembled little ones off to Blockbuster to peruse the latest releases. They came back with My Big Fat Greek Wedding and to be honest, I didn’t feel inspired to watch it at first. It didn’t star any names and I couldn’t recall seeing any clips, so I left them to it.

However, they all loved it and even my husband was laughing out loud and subsequently full of praise. So that evening, I watched it once the kids were in bed. The following evening, I spent about four hours watching the extra features too.

So was My Big Fat Greek Wedding a big fat success or a small slim failure?

THE STORY

Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) lives in the United States, but she is Greek and is never allowed to forget it! She works in the family business – a Greek restaurant. She lives with her parents in a huge house with Parthenon-like pillars outside and a huge mosaic of the Greek flag. She understands her future and her destiny – to marry a Greek man, bear Greek children and cook them all huge amounts of Greek food.

But somehow this future doesn’t seem as tempting to Toula as it does to the rest of her family. She wants more for herself. First of all, she decides to enrol at college and then she falls in love – and he isn’t Greek. Instead, he’s Ian Miller (John Corbett), a tall handsome vegetarian teacher.

As their romance blossoms, they realise the time has come to introduce each other to their parents, but how will it go? Ian’s parents are quiet, refined and serious. Toula’s parents are loud, brash and in-yer-face. Surely the whole thing is destined to end in tears?

THE FILM

This film is one of the warmest and most engaging I have seen. Like a good book, you are drawn in immediately and soon care about the characters. The acting is flawless, with every role being played at just the right level – Andrea Martin’s over-the-top Aunt Voula contrasting perfectly with the demure Fiona Reid as Ian’s mother, Harriet.

The whole film is believable and even if we don’t have any personal involvement with Greek families, there are many themes everyone will recognise – the pressure from our families to follow a pre-destined life path, the relationship between siblings, the insecurities of growing up, each person finding their own role in a large multi-generational family.

The theme of family is the dominant one here. While we see some of the problems associated with it, the over-riding impression is one of love. Quarrels are resolved, prejudices overcome, compromises reached. For essentially a family is a safe haven and as Toula’s father proves, even if the way he goes about it is rather annoying, he is only trying to ensure his family’s happiness.

The lack of big names in the film made it easier for me to become immersed in. I didn’t have to overcome the ‘star factor’ reminding myself it was really Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise. I could simply accept the characters for who they were, without a prior image to contend with.

As well as being a charming film, it is also a very funny one. Watching the film for the second and third time, I still found myself laughing out loud and often at the same places. The humour itself is also warm and engaging, with some clever use of language and visual images.

The main attraction of the film is its warmth. It feels as if the whole cast and crew loved it and as if everything fitted perfectly together. The extra features also suggest that everyone got on well and there were no egos competing for the top spot. Nia Vardalos herself has put a lot of her own feelings into the writing and is – perhaps unsurprisingly – an ideal Toula. Her personal charm is a reason for the success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It is unreservedly brilliant.

EXTRA FEATURES

The menu on the DVD is one area for criticism. Although the idea of the wedding theme seems initially a good one, the way the format is applied makes the menus hard to read and the extra features hard to access.

The chapter index is set out as if on a restaurant menu, with the scenes divided into starter, main course and dessert sections. The features menu is designed to resemble a wedding invitation and the headings for the interviews are in place mat or name card fashion.

However, the whole design of these is rather fussy and as a small font is used throughout (with the Greek translations underneath even smaller!), neither of these help with the clarity of the features menu. The print is often too small to decipher and the icons used to access each feature are usually white, so easy to miss. This would be my main criticism of the DVD.

However, the extras themselves are usually worth seeing. These comprise of a trailer, a guest list (with links to biographies and interviews), production notes and the chance to view the whole film with an information text (Greek school) or while listening to a commentary.

TRAILER

I would recommend you watch this after you have seen the film. I was surprised by how much was given away in this – a summary of most of the plot, clips of the best scenes, several of the best lines. I felt it would have definitely reduced my viewing pleasure if I had seen this first.

GUEST LIST

On first glance, this appears to be nothing more than a hard to read cast list displayed in an irritating way, with the fonts being too small or too ornate to decipher. However, on closer inspection, there are icons of little people to click on for written biographies and speech icons for short interview clips.

I spent quite a long time flicking through this section and found it well worth a viewing or two, although not without criticism. The heading cards used between the interviews are distracting and give a disjointed feel to this section, while the clips themselves are often too short and some are blurred when a person moves, which is annoying.

The quality of the interview segments is very good though, as regards content. It is interesting to see the actors as themselves and hear their real voices. Michael Constantine must have been especially convincing in his role as Gus, because I was very surprised to hear him sound so American!

The interviews are with Nia Vardalos (writer/Toula Portokalos), John Corbett (Ian Miller), Lainie Kazan (Maria Portokalos), Michael Constantine (Gus Portokalos), Gia Carides (Nikki), Andrea Martin (Aunt Voula), Joey Fatone (Angelo), Rita Wilson (producer) and Tom Hanks (producer).

It was in this segment that I discovered why Joey Fatone had received quite high billing, despite neither my husband nor myself knowing who he was. The biographical details reveal he was part of NSYNC.

PRODUCTION NOTES

This is interesting enough to read the once, but the format used is not the easiest. Eleven pages of notes written in small font and all in capitals are not easy on the eye and it took some concentration to digest the information, even though the contents were worth knowing.

I hadn’t known that Rita Wilson was Greek, but this gave an added insight into the making of the film. As Tom Hanks had married into Rita’s Greek family, you can understand why they decided to take on this project after watching the stage version and then reading Nia Vardalos’ screenplay.

GREEK SCHOOL

This is an option to have information text boxes on the screen during the viewing of the film. The format of this is very clever, as it is done under the guise of Greek school. You are offered a variety of pieces of information throughout, colour coded into their various subjects.

The areas covered include the Greek language and specific words used in the film, Greek food and history. These range from the fascinating through the mildly interesting to the downright incomprehensibly trivial (Temperature statistics for Chicago, anyone?!).

I would suggest this is certainly worth a look, but whether you would want to sit through the whole film this way is debatable. If, however, you have an interest in Greece, this would be fascinating.

COMMENTARY

The audio commentary is by Nia Vardalos, John Corbett and the director Joel Zwick. To be honest, Nia dominates the whole commentary – but not in the aggressive, egocentric way that the word ‘dominates’ suggests. She comes across as a warm, loving, charming and unassuming woman who is completely enthusiastic about the film and is still somewhat stunned that her screenplay has come so far.

John Corbett manages to get the odd comment in, but seems rather quiet and shy, more than happy to take a backseat. Joel Zwick was possibly only in the room for five minutes as he rarely says anything and the only bit I can remember is how enthusiastically he said his name! Perhaps, like an actor with just one line in the whole play, he wanted to make the most of what he did say.

The commentary as a whole is fascinating and one that would easily withstand repeated listening. You discover some of the technical side of the film - how the roles were cast, when and how certain scenes were filmed, how the sets were constructed and so on.

For me, the most fascinating anecdotes and information come from Nia in this commentary. Being both the lead actress and the writer, she has a multi-sided view of the whole film and gives us a wonderful insight into how she wrote it.

I was amazed how much of it is autobiographical and she peppers her commentary with many stories of real life experiences she has had of scenes in the film. The movie itself seems very much a happy, family set and indeed, that seems exactly what it was like – often quite literally! Nia’s husband (Ian Gomez) is in the film as Ian Miller’s friend Mike, her sister did the choreography, the script contains many of her real family’s names and her relatives feature in several of the scenes as extras!

I was also pleased that Nia explained her character’s image transformation too, as I was worried on seeing this that it was going to become yet another ‘plain girl becomes pretty and gets her man’ type films. I much preferred her explanation.

Similarly, it was interesting listening to Nia explain why there are no sex scenes in the film. For us as parents, this was refreshing, as there was nothing to make us embarrassed watching this in front of our children and really, this film proves they aren’t necessary. (There aren’t any swear words either.)

PRICE INFORMATION

DVD £14.99 from Amazon

DVD Release Date: 24 March, 2003
Running Time: 95 minutes

• Region 2 encoding
• Widescreen, PAL

Video £11.24 from Amazon

OVERALL

My Big Fat Greek Wedding has no bad guys, no deaths, no illness and no sadness. It has no swearing, no sex scenes and no gun swishing bravado. What it does have is charm, warmth and love – in bucketloads. You will be swept away into the characters’ lives and enveloped in the voluptuous bosom of the Portokalos family. From the loving but misguided Gus to the insane but adorable Aunt Voula, you will treasure your time spent with them and recall the happy memories many times in the future.

Highly recommended!