MOVIE REVIEW: MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 (2016)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a surprise hit full of charm, wit, and heart. This sequel, which very few people even asked for, tries to recycle all of those positive qualities without coming up with anything new or meaningful to say. While the timing of the film works, given the story being told, it arrived in theaters over a decade after the original. By this time, enthusiasm for the original film had tapered off (an attempted sitcom spin-off was a dud), and fans could relive the fun on DVD or catching pieces of it on TV movie reruns.

Nia Vardalos is back as Toula Portokalos-Miller, the sweet and sanest member of a very animated Greek-American family in Chicago. This time around, Toula finds herself to be the overbearing one, as she micromanages her daughter’s college selection process. In other family matters, her parents discover that the priest who officiated their wedding never signed the marriage certificate, so they need to get married again to make it official. Toula’s father is adamant about getting remarried, but her mother demands the proposal and wedding ceremony that she never got to have as a young woman. This leads to friction as the two proud, elderly Greek-Americans butt heads over every detail.

When a movie sticks the landing so well, it makes it hard to come up with more. Most sequels are inferior to the original film because they either try too hard to recapture the magic of the first outing or they go too far the other way and try to be too different from the original. The former seems to be the case here. Vardalos still has a knack for writing colorful characters, but with the focus split between two storylines, there’s less time to build up the supporting cast so they can shine. What we end up with are hasty bit parts and cameos from the characters that helped fill out the first film. They were hilarious the first go around because of their outlandish personalities. This time, however, the humor is less effective because it’s a little off-putting that most of these folks still act the same way they did 14 years ago (18 or more, if you account for the daughter being a senior in high school). Real people change over time, so these characters need to as well. That’s missing here.

It is frustrating to see Toula’s character becoming the kind of controlling parent who wants their child to stay close to home that she fought against in the original film. Yes, she relents at the end of the first film and stays close to home, but many of the endearing qualities that suggested she could be more than just the next neurotic member of her close-knit family seem to have melted away over the years. Yes, she’s still likeable, but it’s not the future for her character that was hinted at (that people cheered for) in the first film.

Since My Big Fat Greek Wedding took the world by storm in 2002, the world changed. Tastes changed. Comedy changed. This film leans a little too hard on its assumption that audiences are nostalgic for these characters. While some may still be nostalgic for films like the original, that doesn’t mean you can just dust the Portokalos clan off as if the filmmakers opened up a time capsule. Cinema doesn’t work that way. Maybe Vardalos could have made an effective follow-up out of her parents need to get married again, and then a third movie about the daughter. Trying to do both at the same time, all the while retaining a breezy 95-minute runtime is too limiting for the entire production.

FINAL RATING: 1.5 out of 5