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Special Features
- 3 audio commentaries with Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, and Director Joel Zwick
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Product Description
Customer Reviews
Refreshingly normal-looking Nia Vardalos basically plays herself in a script she wrote from memories of her own Greek-American upbringing. Maybe that is why the movie comes across as so real and so heartwarming. At any rate, Vardalos plays Toula, a 30-year-old spinster (in her traditional father's eyes) who helps run the family's restaurant, the Dancing Zorba. Hidden behind thick glasses, baggy sweaters and too much hair, Toula is miserable. She loves her family, but she wants to find her own niche in the world--without giving Papa a heart attack.
After much high emotion, Toula improves her looks, goes back to school, snags a job in her aunt's travel agency (after all, reasons Papa, it's still family) and meets the man of her dreams (gorgeous John Corbett, "Aidan" from "Sex and the City"). Everything should be happy, no? NO! Ian (the boyfriend) is NOT GREEK, and Papa is beside himself.
This movie is simply a delight, from the opening credits to the very end. It is unpretentious, warm, loving, and happy. And on top of all that, it's truly well-acted and very, very funny. I recommend it highly.
The movie starts with Tula, a 30 year old Greek girl who is looked at as somewhat of a failure by the family because she has not done what she is supposed to do, Marry a Greek man, Have Greek Children, and cook for everybody until the day she dies. but at least (As said by her aunt) she will be there to take care of her parents when they are old. As tula slowly starts to find her own way, thinking about goind to collage, switching jobs from the family resterant, ect.. enter Ian Miller, from a conservative, WASPy family, and somebody unlike everybody else in Tula's life. This movie could have so easily de-generated into the typical Hollywood pap, i.e. become preachy about Tula's right to do what she wants, or done the Three's company plot of "She tells a fib about her life, he finds out, gets angry, they make up at the end" or lastly and most commonly, made out the WASP family to be bigoted and unaccepting characitures who finally come around after basking in the glow emitted by the Greek family.... Read more ›
The mix of cultures is very well done--not, as some reviewers have said, tritely at all. John Corbett's ultra WASPy Ian Miller is a perfect foil for Nia Vardalos' ultra Greek Toula who, at the age of six, was the only girl in her school who was swarthy with sideburns. She's smart, attractive, and most of all full of innocent charm which is a huge plus in these days of Hollywood bombast.
The culture mix is upped several notches when Ian's SUPER-ultra WASPy conservative, reigned-in parents come to Toula's house for a "quiet dinner" which turns out to be an uproar attended by no less than about 25 people--Toula's family, of course, invited by her parents. It's great to see the uptight Millers consume mass quantities of ouzo, encouraged by their host's entreaties, and the resulting discombobulation.
Innocence, in fact, is everywhere in this film and gives it the tremendous charm and warmth it has. Confusing innocence for triteness is a huge mistake. Here, both leads radiate the innocence of pure romance which is very moving, and the romance is beautifully balanced with a lot of very funny moments.
Toula's father, played by Michael Constantine (a Greek), is constantly lecturing his family on how Greek is the language of origin of ALL words--even kimono--and applying Windex to EVERY pain or hurt a human being can experience. He can be a grump, but it's obvious he has real heart. His mother comes directly from Greece to stay with the family and is the source of some truly inspired hilarity.
Does the couple meet cute? Depends on how you define that. The real answer is, No, they don't; they meet normally, like two people might realistically meet.
... Read more ›
