My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Plot

Toula Portokalos-Miller's (Nia Vardalos) life is in shambles. Her travel agency and the family dry cleaners have closed due to the recession. The only business still open is the family restaurant that her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), still runs. Her husband, Ian (John Corbett), is the principal at their teen-aged daughter, Paris' (Elena Kampouris), high school. Paris, who is applying to college, feels smothered by her close-knit clan, who constantly interfere in her life. Desperate for independence and privacy, she applies to schools across the country. Ian and Toula's marriage has become strained due to Toula's obsessive need to be involved in Paris' life and to "fix" whatever goes wrong in her family.

Meanwhile, Gus has convinced himself that he is directly descended from Alexander the Great and wants to write to an online ancestry site for confirmation. While sorting through his records, he discovers that his and Maria's (Lanie Kazan) marriage certificate was never signed by the priest, technically invalidating their union. His current priest refuses to sign it but agrees to perform a new ceremony. Gus insists that he and Maria must marry again after fifty years together, but Maria wants Gus to propose properly. Gus refuses, infuriating Maria, who refused to go through with the ceremony. Meanwhile, when Toula and Ian are on a date night to rekindle their romance, their family catches them kissing in their car outside their house. After Gus lands in the hospital and Maria refuses to go, saying she is not his wife, Gus pleas for her to marry him again. This time she accepts.

Maria wants the wedding she never had and hires a wedding planner who quits after the rowdy family's choices become too outlandish. The whole family, including Ian's parents, Rodney and Harriet (Bruce Gray and Fiona Reid), and Angelo's business partner, Patrick, pitch in to make the wedding happen. Nick urges Angelo to tell his parents, Voula (Andrea Martin) and Taki (Gerry Mendicino) that Patrick is also Angelo's romantic partner. Gus's estranged brother, Panos (Mark Margolis) arrives from Greece as a surprise.

Paris has been accepted to Northwestern University in Chicago and NYU in New York City. She chooses Northwestern to please her mother, but Paris' great-grandmother (Bess Meisler) convinces her she should go to New York. Paris asks Bennett (Alex Wolff), a boy she has a crush on, to the prom. He is also Greek with an equally crazy Greek family. Prom is the same night as the wedding. Toula tells Paris she can go to the prom if she attends the reception later. En route to the church, Gus, Panos, and Taki arrive drunk after many shots of ouzo. Maria storms off to the vestry after seeing Gus acting foolishly, feeling he is not taking the wedding seriously. Panos tells Maria that Gus had confided to him his love for Maria, and the ceremony continues. Watching as Gus and Maria recite their vows, Ian and Toula privately renew theirs. At the prom, Paris and Bennett share their first kiss while slow-dancing.

At the wedding reception, Gus reads a letter from the ancestry site verifying that he is a descendant of Alexander the Great. Ian, however, realizes that Toula forged the letter to make her father happy. The movie ends with the entire family dropping Paris off at her college dorm in New York.

Cast

Production

In a 2009 interview for her film My Life in Ruins, asked about a possible sequel to the 2002 hit romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia 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,

On May 27, 2014, various news and media outlets reported that a sequel was in the works. Vardalos later confirmed this via Twitter, and wrote the script for the film. Universal Pictures acquired the US distribution rights to the film on November 11, 2014, and Kirk Jones was set to direct, based on the script by Vardalos, who also starred.

Filming

Principal photography began on May 10, 2015 in Toronto, and ended on June 28.

Release

In May 2015, Universal set the film for a March 25, 2016 release.

Home media

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 21, 2016.

Box office

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 grossed $59.7 million in North America and $29.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $88.9 million, against an $18 million budget.

In its opening weekend, the film was projected to gross $15 million from 3,133 theaters. It grossed $7.2 million on its first day and $17.9 million in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million) and Zootopia ($24 million). In its second weekend, the film grossed $11.2 million (a 37.2% drop), again finishing third behind Batman v Superman ($51.3 million) and Zootopia ($19.3 million).

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 29% based on 151 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is as sweet and harmless as the original, but its collection of sitcom gags and stereotypes never coalesces into anything resembling a story with a purpose." Metacritic gave the film a score of 37 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Polled by CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale.

Sequel

In late June 2016, Vardalos hinted at the possibility of a third film, saying that although no writing has been done, she does have an idea.