My Big Fat Greek Wedding starts out as a modern day Cinderella story and culminates with the traditional end to most fairy tail romances - the wedding, with all of its associated complexities and mishaps. There's a significant element of cultures clashing here, as well. The three primary rules of life for a young Greek girl are to (1) marry a Greek boy, (2) make Greek babies, and (3) feed everyone for the rest of your life. So, when Toula Portokas (Nia Vardalos) becomes involved with the not-at-all Greek Ian Miller (John Corbett), she sets the family in an uproar.
The movie is more in the nature of an embrace and celebration of Greek culture than it is a lampoon. Sure, there are times when it pokes fun, but, on those occasions, it is gentle and kind-hearted, not nasty or sarcastic. And many of the foibles attributed to the Portokalos family would apply equally to any ethnic clan, regardless of wether they're Greek, Italian, Polish, Spanish, etc. A key to deriving enjoyment from this sort of movie is to laugh not just at others, but at oneself.
The movie is consistently funny without going over the top - a rarity in movies. While some of the comedy is more witty than sidesplitting, there are plenty of opportunities for belly laughs. More than one of these relates to Gus' (Michael Constantine) strange belief that any sort of physical infirmity or infection can be cured with Windex. And, in the process of boosting the laugh quotient, it does not lose sight of the characters.
The actors all play their roles well. Nia Vardalos (who also wrote the screenplay) cleans up nicely. At the beginning of the film, her Toula is genuinely frumpy. And, while the makeover greatly improves Toula's appearance and sex appeal, she doesn't turn into a stunner. John Corbett, probably still best known for Northern Exposure, approaches the part of Ian with an easy grace and charm. Michael Constantine and Laine Kazan have no difficulty sliding into the largely stereotyped roles of the grudging father and supportive mother.
Although, My Big Fat Wedding is a breakthrough for director Joel Zwick and writer Valdalos, its success is perhaps not as suprising as some pundits would lead the movie-going public to believe. The mistake here was by the major studios not to snap up this movie and let this picture go out as an independent production (though with Tom Hanks as producer it must have caught somebody's eye).