‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3’ Review – A Crowded Trip With The Portokalos

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 begins with Toula (Nia Vardalos) and family surrounding their matriarch, Maria (Lainie Kazan), as she battles early signs of dementia and struggles to remember the death of her husband, Gus. Michael Constantine, who portrayed Gus in previous iterations, passed away in 2021 and the film is dedicated to him. Maria is convinced to stay at home while Cousin Nikki (Gia Carides) and Angelo (Joey Fatone) watch over her so Toula and her family, along with Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) and Aunt Frieda (Maria Vacratsis) head off to Greece for a family reunion. The reunion will allow Toula and Nick (Louis Mandylor) to also grant their father’s last wish and return a journal he maintained his entire life after landing in America to his 3 childhood friends.

If that summary sounds like enough for any movie, it’s because it is. This sequel introduces and explores a number of additional side stories though, creating an overflowing behemoth that’s still only 1 hour and 31 minutes long. The main narrative is the reunion and the journal. The My Big Fat Greek Wedding series wouldn’t be a sequel without a wedding though. With only 91 minutes to spare, the movie glides through dementia, long lost family members plus additional secrets, of course, a wedding, NYU news for Paris (Elena Kampouris) and a relationship for her too, grief over Gus, migrants and refugees, and returning a Greecian town to glory, all while Toula and Ian (John Corbett) continue to learn how to respect boundaries. 

Every narrative ties together, though each isn’t fleshed out, so it’s clear why second time director Vardalos didn’t cut much material. Now that she’s in the director’s seat, she interjects some new life into her material by holding onto all those parts. The previous sequel was missing some of the charm of the first; this outing returns some of that heart, but still needs to be slimmed down. Not less time spent with characters, just fewer side stories, because the material could easily have been saved for a fourth movie or new trilogy. 

Though the charm of the movie is real and there’s clear joy amongst the cast, choppy editing and complete disregard for continuity distract the viewing. This makes it more difficult to keep up with the aforementioned storylines. There’s potentially an intent to create vignettes of the characters or just a fresh-take on montages, but in practice, the audience is in for a jarring experience. We witness multiple scenes with 1 to 3 characters in a particular setting only to have them appear in a new setting in the very next scene without much logical explanation as to how they all arrived. Characters walk, drive, and even bike from location to location, moving in and out of one another’s errands throughout the film. The geography of the island is clear, yet it’s not clear why the cast is plopped randomly in and out of scenes aside from an attempt to quickly move the story along.

The film is still about family at its core and it’s impossible to miss that notion. Audiences can tell the cast enjoys one another and they seem excited to return to these characters, and there’s never a doubt that the characters know the importance of family. Many of them are even learning how they need to modernize their ways and catch up with the time. Both the daughter, Paris, and other young adults entering the series for the first time make this clear, but so do their family members. Audiences will appreciate the slow growth that’s developed over three movies. Aside from a few nudity jokes, the film works really well as a family film. Our audience often joked and jeered at the screen and definitely had a good time. The movie just isn’t quite what a viewer might expect if they’re fans of the previous outings.

The standouts are two newcomers to the franchise, actresses Melina Kotselou and Anthi Andreopoulou. They both play locals that never left the small town (Athens and Corfu in reality), with Melina taking on the role of the youthful mayor named Victory that will return the town’s glory and Anthi playing Alexandra, the older local stuck in her ways. They both bring energy to their roles and play off of the returning cast well. You can see Nia returning to any of these characters to see how the next generation plays out the lessons their elders learned, but this could easily be the end of the chapters as well. 

Overall, this sequel is more enjoyable than the second one, but the film is merely too crowded, so it’s difficult to enjoy it more than the original. Everyone’s joy and fun with the story is almost infectious and you can never take away what Vardalos has accomplished over two decades. You have to respect the feat of writing and producing a story that’s authentic to her, especially since she was able to direct this entry. That trajectory will always garner respect and fascination. 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is currently playing in theaters courtesy of Focus Features. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAflXqZ5xs0]