My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Plot

30-year-old Fortoula "Toula" Portokalos feels that she is the only woman in her family who has "failed" at being a typical Greek girl. Her family expects her to be more like her 33-year-old sister Athena and marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and "feed everyone until the day she dies." Instead, Toula is stuck working in the family restaurant in Chicago, "Dancing Zorba's." Frumpy and cynical, she fears that she is doomed to be stuck with her life. One day while at the restaurant, Toula briefly becomes enamored with and embarrasses herself in front of Ian Miller, a handsome school teacher.

An argument with her overly nationalistic father Gus, who wants his daughter to marry and settle down with another Greek or man of Greek origin rather than pursue a career, causes Toula to want her own life away from the restaurant and her intrusive family. Gus refers to anybody who is non-Greek as "Xenos". After some persuasion by his wife, Maria, Gus reluctantly permits Toula to begin taking computer classes at a community college. Toula trades her glasses for contact lenses, curls her hair, and begins to wear make-up, improving her confidence, mood, and self-esteem. Armed with her skills, Toula convinces her mother and her Aunt Voula to get Gus to allow her to work at Voula's travel agency instead of the restaurant.

Toula does better in her new job, catching the eye of Ian, who is smitten with her. Despite Toula being shy whenever she sees Ian, they introduce themselves, date, and fall in love. Toula tries to keep the relationship secret from her family, until Gus finds out due to the closeness of the Greek-American community. He throws a fit because Ian is not an ethnic Greek, and he orders Toula to end the relationship and tries to set her up on dates with Greek men, but Ian and Toula continue to see each other, against Gus's wishes. Ian proposes to her, and Toula accepts. Gus is hurt and infuriated, feeling that his daughter has betrayed him. Ian, wanting to be with Toula, agrees to be baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, an act which earns Gus's grudging respect and the acceptance of the rest of the family.

Obstacles start to occur during the planning of the wedding, as Toula's numerous relatives "helpfully" interfere by imposing their ideas into her planning. The situation reaches its head when Gus and Maria invite the entire family to what was meant to be a "quiet" introductory dinner with Ian's demure and private parents, and the evening is a failure.

The wedding day dawns, and though Toula is nervous, the traditional Greek wedding goes without a hitch. At the reception, Gus gives a speech accepting Ian and the Millers as his new family. As his wedding gift, he presents the newlyweds with a deed to a new home. Following the reception, Toula and Ian drive away to begin their married life.

An epilogue shows the couple's life six years later. They have a daughter, who complains that she would prefer not to go to Greek school. Toula placates her by assuring her that when the time comes, she can marry whomever she wants. As they walk towards Greek school, it is revealed that their home is next door to that of Toula's parents.

Development

My Big Fat Greek Wedding started as a one-woman play written by and starring Vardalos, performed for six weeks at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Los Angeles in the summer of 1997. Vardalos later jokingly stated that she only wrote the play "to get a better agent." The play was based on Vardalos's own family in Winnipeg in Canada and on her experience marrying a non-Greek man (actor Ian Gomez). The play was popular, and was sold out for much of its run, in part due to Vardalos's marketing it across Greek Orthodox churches in the area. A number of Hollywood executives and celebrities saw it, including actress Rita Wilson, who is herself of Greek origin; Wilson convinced her husband, actor Tom Hanks, to see it as well.

Vardalos began meeting various executives about making a film version of the play and began writing a screenplay as well. However, the meetings proved fruitless because the executives insisted on making changes that they felt would make the film more marketable, which Vardalos objected to: these included changing the plot, getting a known actress in the lead role (Marisa Tomei was one name mentioned), and changing the family's ethnicity to Hispanic. Two months after the play's initial run ended, Hanks's production company, Playtone, contacted Vardalos about producing a film based on her vision for it; they also agreed to remount the play in early 1998, this time at LA's Globe Theatre. Hanks later said that casting Vardalos in the lead role "brings a huge amount of integrity to the piece, because it's Nia's version of her own life and her own experience. I think that shows through on the screen and people recognize it."

In 2000, while in Toronto doing pre-production for the film, Vardalos and Playtone producer Gary Goetzman overheard actor John Corbett (who was in town shooting the film Serendipity) at a bar, telling a friend of his about having read the script for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and being upset that he couldn't make the auditions. Vardalos and Goetzman approached Corbett and offered him the part of Ian Miller on the spot, which he accepted.

Filming

Despite being based on life in the Greek community of Winnipeg, the film was set in Chicago and shot in both Toronto and Chicago. Toronto's Ryerson University and Greektown neighborhood feature prominently in the film. The home used to depict Gus and Maria Portokalos' residence (as well as the home bought next door at the end of the film for Toula and Ian) is located on Glenwood Crescent just off O'Connor Drive in East York. The real home representing the Portokalos' residence actually has most of the external ornamentation that was shown in the film. Also, some minor parts of the movie were shot in Jarvis High School in Toronto.

Release

After a February 2002 premiere, it was initially released in the United States via a limited release on April 19, 2002 before receiving a wider release worldwide over the summer, including a wide release in the United States on August 2.

Box office performance

My Big Fat Greek Wedding became a sleeper hit and grew steadily from its limited release. Despite never hitting the number one spot and being an independent film with a $5 million budget, it ultimately grossed over $368.7 million worldwide, becoming one of the top romantic films of the 21st century according to Echo Bridge Entertainment. It was the fifth highest-grossing film of 2002 in the United States and Canada, with USD$241,438,208, and the highest-grossing romantic comedy in history. Domestically, it also held the record for the highest-grossing film never having been number one on the weekly North American box office charts, until the release of the 2016 animated film, Sing. The film is among the most profitable of all time, with a 6150% return on a (inflation adjusted) cost of $6 million to produce.

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating 76% based on 121 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though it sometimes feels like a television sitcom, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is good-hearted, lovable, and delightfully eccentric, with a sharp script and lead performance from Nia Vardalos." On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out to reviews, the film has an average score of 62 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

10th-anniversary edition

In 2012, a 10th anniversary edition of the film was released via DVD and Blu-ray. The edition contains a digital copy of the film and features deleted scenes as well as a 30-minute retrospective with Vardalos and Corbett.

Lawsuit

The cast (with the exception of Vardalos, who had a separate deal), as well as Hanks' production company, Playtone, later sued the studio for their part of the profits, charging that Gold Circle Films was engaging in so-called "Hollywood accounting" practices.

Television series

The film inspired the brief 2003 TV series My Big Fat Greek Life, with most of the major characters played by the same actors, with the exception of Steven Eckholdt replacing Corbett as the husband. Corbett had already signed on to the TV series Lucky. He was scheduled to appear as the best friend of his replacement's character, but the show was cancelled before he appeared. The show received poor reviews from critics noting the random character entrances and serious plot "adjustments" that did not match the film.

The seven episodes from the series are available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, whose TV studio division produced the show.

Sequel

In a 2009 interview for her film My Life in Ruins, asked about a possible sequel for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Vardalos stated that she had an idea for a sequel and had started writing it, hinting that, like Ruins, the film would be set in Greece.

Asked about a sequel again in a November 2012 interview, she stated, "Well, actually, yes. And it's only now that I've really become open to the idea. Over the years, I've heard from everybody about what the sequel should be. People next to me at Starbucks would say, 'Hey, let me tell you my idea,' and I'd be like, 'Hey, I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee.' I never thought much about it. But then when John (Corbett) and I recently sat down to do that interview (for the 10th anniversary edition), we laughed so hard through the whole thing. It made me think that it's time. He said, "Come on, write something, will you?" And I now think I will. We have such an easy chemistry together. And we have chemistry because we never 'did it.' That's the surefire way to kill chemistry in a scene. You have to make sure your actors don't 'do it' off-screen. If they don't 'do it,' then they'll have chemistry on camera."

On May 27, 2014, various news and media outlets reported that a sequel was in the works. Nia Vardalos later confirmed this via Twitter, and she also has written a script for the film. The first trailer for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 was aired on NBC's The Today Show on November 11, 2015 and it was released on March 25, 2016, to generally negative reviews and comparatively minor box office success to the original.