Despite detractors complaining that the original was a TV sitcom in cinematic drag, the concept clearly works better as a series of self-contained films than a TV show: whereas the spin-off sitcom “My Big Fat Greek Life” ran less than a full season, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” was a hit, despite being released 14 years after the original, returning nearly five times its production budget. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” will probably be a success as well because writer/star Nia Vardalos, aka Toula Portokalos, created the recipe and is running the kitchen now (it’s her second directorial endeavor after 2009’s “I Hate Valentine’s Day“). She knows what the customer likes.
The biggest hurdle to creating another chapter in this family saga was the absence of Michael Constantine, who died at 94 after two performances as the Portokalos family’s gruff, impulsive, but bighearted patriarch, Gus. Vardalos follows the path of many smart franchise filmmakers who have to deal with the death of a primary cast member and leans into the immutable facts of life. We learn that Gus wanted the extended family to convene in the Portokalos clan’s ancestral home, a small village in Greece, and reunite with surviving relatives from the old days, but he didn’t live long enough to see his dream come true. What follows is an extended commercial for Greek vacations and the idealized immigrant family.
The craftiness of the “Wedding” films lies in how they introduce multiple “conflicts” that aren’t conflicts and then resolve them without the characters having to sacrifice much of anything. The major and minor characters are all fundamentally decent (though sometimes grating or insensitive, in a lightly comic way), and tend to be related to the same intensely loyal family by blood, marriage, or deep friendship. They talk about the problems they’re saddled with, but you don’t see them working hard to solve them or losing anything they can’t get back. Often, the situation is resolved by having another character take care of it without much evident exertion. The ultimate example can be found in the second film: Gus has to remarry his wife Maria (Lainie Kazan) because he’s discovered that the priest who officiated at their wedding never signed their marriage certificate; Maria won’t agree to a second ceremony unless Gus makes a proper proposal; he refuses; there’s a bit of a minor strife over this impasse; then Gus ends up in the hospital, and Maria refuses to visit him because she’s legally not his wife, and he relents and gives her a version of what she wants, because the movie has the word “wedding” in its title.