My Big Fat Greek Wedding: An extremely charming film

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">She’s fat, frumpy, cute and Greek. He’s thin, taut, handsome and American. The 30-year old Tula tells her Prince Charming Ian, "Let’s run away and marry." The wise Prince demurs. "No the family must consent to our match." And he then proceeds to woo Tula’s large loud and aggressively passionate Greek family right up the marriage altar.<br />Sounds familiar? We’ve seen this seductively romantic scenario unfolding in Aditya Chopra’s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge </span>with great success.Going back to several decades, in Sohanlal Kanwar’s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Pehchan, </span>actress Babita was similarly chastened by the virtuous Manoj Kumar when she suggested marriage without parental green light.<br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">My Big Fat Greek Wedding </span>is extremely familiar territory for Indian movigoers. It would remind you of a thousand flicks from Pehchan to <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dilwale Dulhaniya </span>and beyond. And yet there’s a native charm to actress-screenwriter Nia Vardolas’ screenplay(based on her autobiographical stage play) which will simply---and boy, how simply!—sweep you off your feet.<br />It’s a film that manipulates our collective senses into a kind of compressed acquiescence whereby we do not question the veracity and motivations of the large and obstrusive Greek joint family. The Greeks may creek at the edges. But damn it! They’re one cute lot of clamorous pleasure-seekers huddling together under an ethnically prideful umbrella.<br />The spinsterish Tula wants to break away from the family cordon and make a life independent of her persistent father(Michael Constantine) and the rest the offbeam family including a grandmother who believes the Greeks are still fighting medieval wars on the cobbled streets.<br />And never mind if it’s the year 2002. If Toronto can pose as Chicago in director Edward Zwick’s scream of things, an old woman is surely entitled to her share of senility. <br />Wonderfully, the film turns on the heat of the gyrating eccentrics on the romantic-comedy genre and then lets us feel the gust of gusto that emanates from the characters’ endearing anachronisms. The mirthful misfits helmed by Tula’s Dad who believes every English-American word is of Greek origin and who thinks computers are evil gadgets invented to corrupt the young generation , fits into the gamboling jigsaw of misplaced characters yearning to remain broadly Greek in the Land Of Dreams.<br />Like the series of satires on the diaspora by NRI directors from <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">American Desi </span>to <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">East Is East, My Big Fat Greek Wedding </span>is a winsomely doughty about its gallery of exiled characters.<br />The screenplay deliberately allows the "normal" couple Tula(who’s become assimilated into Americana even while her family remains stuck on its Grecian path) and her Prince Charming Ian(John Corbett) to remain blissfully lovelorn as wackiness oozes out of every corner of the frames.<br />The fairytale assumptions of the plot(exactly what the suave and genteel American hero finds attractive about the Greek Plain Jane, we shall never know) are buoyed by a sense of imminent nirvana. Flashes of great dialogue("Don’t let the past dictate your present, let it be part of your future...."If the man is the head the woman is the next, can’t turn anywhere without her") ricochet across the richly elemental plot about burps belches and over-the-hill belles finding Mr Perfect in the din of destiny’s vagrant progression.<br />It’s not difficult to see why a film which was made at a cost of 5 million dollars has already raked in over 18 million at the US boxoffice. More than anything else, <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">My Big Fat Greek Wedding </span>is an extremely charming film. It exudes the aroma of home-ground spices, delicately garnished with the urbane witticism of Hollywood’s romantic comedy.<br />A lot of the plot is pure baloney. Prince Charming who doesn’t whimper in protest as his girl’s Greek family washes him holy and unholy water, is a bit hard to swallow. Also, once Tula falls in love(after some truly amiable games of courtship) the story simply runs out of steam. <br />While most of the humour, directed at the clash of cultures and the comic crisis of cross-pollination is indeed funny, director Zwick(whose last and first—film Second Sight 12 years ago—was a ghastly piece of trash) overdoes the intended humour of the the misalliaance.<br />Put simply the Greeks are too Greek and the Americans just pander to their streotypical images. What makes the film special is its sincere core. Nia Vardalos has sharpened her sensibilities regarding the Greek-American diaspora to the point where parody has effectually replaced poignancy. The tragedy of a 30-year old woman of Greek origin being constantly reminded of her unmarried status is drowned in pools of laughter. But at the bottom of the smiling pool the pebbles of discomfort are constantly visible.<br />The secret of this buoyant film’s success is , it’s <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge </span>without the burden of political correctness and the songs. The Greeks don’t mind looking a wee bit like freaks. Because at the end of the day we’re all insecure emigres looking for a place to rest our hearts.</div> </div>