Full disclosure before this review beings, I haven’t see My Big Fat Greek Wedding
and have avoided watching it like the plague ever since its release in
2002. I also only agreed to watch this film under duress and as a favour
to our editor-in-chief who was taking a much earned break on the day of
the screening. What follows is a review from the perspective of someone
who is coming to the series stone cold.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is as generic as you’d expect and
despite not having seen the first it feels very much like a lather,
rinse, repeat affair. This time around the titular wedding focusses in
on the older generation of the family as, thanks to a loophole, their
first wedding wasn’t actually legally binding.
Given that the first film made over $650 million dollars at the box
office (not bad from a budget of $5 million) its surprising that the
distributors have decided to release the film against Batman Versus Superman.
Maybe they’re hoping to get the Superhero widows, because women don’t
like comic book movies right? This sort of stereotypical thinking fits
right in with the film that really does nothing for either sex.
The female characters fit into about four boxes; the flirt, the
suffocatingly overprotective mother, the gossip and the bitch. The men
get even less boxes: man-child, kook and drunk. The overarching message
of the film is meant to be that you can do whatever you want and your
family will still love you, however, all the older generation’s
stereotype ideals are upheld and no one goes against the grain. Even the
rebellious teenage daughter falls into line by the end credits. There’s
also an awful pre-wedding girl chat that encourages women to pretend to
faint on their wedding night and let their new husband ‘do the work’ –
what!?
The wedding itself takes up a very small portion of run time, the
film is more of a vehicle to check in on the characters that the
audiences fell for the first time round. Sadly there doesn’t seem to
have been much development.
Disappointingly average and harmful to gender stereotypes, the film
may go down well with fans nostalgic for the original, but stay away if
you are of a more modern or progressive mindset.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, review by Kat Hughes, March 2016.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 25th March.
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