It’s about time Hollywood started admitting that Nia Vardalos is a one trick pony. After her wildly successful vanilla sitcom romantic comedy in 2002, she returns to the original premise fourteen years later. After many more failed cinematic vehicles, and a really embarrassing attempt to turn her movie in to an actual Television sitcom, Vardalos goes back to the well to deliver what feels like a pitch for another sitcom. Or maybe a TV drama comedy, since sitcoms are so passé and old fashioned. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” is a painfully contrived and moronic sequel that takes everything that was likable about these characters and turns them in to shrill and obnoxious plot devices.
What were once a big brood of close knit individuals that were there for one another every time, now turns in to big group of people without the concept of personal boundaries. One scene even sees character Toula’s teen daughter Paris at a college fair in school, pondering what school she should go to. The entire family then shows up out of nowhere to bring food, take pictures, and badger Paris in to going to college near the family and getting married. What should be an awkwardly hilarious scene, is really just a tacked on attempt at slapstick that portrays these people as suffocating, and overbearing. Writer Nia Vardalos doesn’t seem to have enough of a plot involving Toula’s daughter Paris wanting to go to college after school, so she injects many more ridiculous sub-plots to fill the movie’s run time.
Fifty years ago when Toula’s parents we married, the priest didn’t sign their certificate, so it means they’re not actually married. So they now have to have another big fat Greek wedding! Oh the hilarity. But Toula’s mother doesn’t want to re-marry and is considering calling off the whole shebang. There’s also another sub-plot involving Toula trying to re-ignite the spark in her marriage to Ian Miller, which almost always falls on its head thanks to her intrusive family. To pile on, there’s another sub-plot where one of the characters reveals his true sexuality. Neither of these sub-plots are at all suspenseful since the movie is basically one long sitcom assuring us that everything will wrap up in a neat bow by the time the credits begin to roll. Vardalos never saw a cliché she didn’t enjoy, so most of the film spends its time with montages set to classic pop music.
Writer Vardalos doesn’t seem to have any interesting characters to mine from this premise, so she basically just follows everyone around hoping to catch some instance of entertainment for the audience. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” is a chore to sit through, as it takes all the mildly charming elements from the original film, and accidentally reveal how annoying they can be. It’s yet another sequel in 2016 that we didn’t need.