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If ever a movie could be negatively affected by monstrous box office numbers, it’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding. When a five million dollar film rides a tsunami of critical buzz and excellent word-of-mouth past the two hundred million dollar box office gross (finally ending somewhere over $230 million), it’s impossible to see it for the first time completely free of expectation. Perhaps this was my mistake, because I went into my first viewing of the king of sleeper hits excited to a super-duper romantic comedy. ...I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. Was it a hearty helping of belly laughs? This film offers sparse and modest chuckles at best. Perhaps it was some sort of originality within its predictable story arc. Instead, this is a by-the-numbers romcom with by-the-numbers romcom characters. Maybe I was hoping for a film that could at least approach capturing the profundity of love, or the reality of struggles with culturally divergent family values. Whatever it was, I felt pretty unfulfilled by the time it was all over, even though I found the movie reasonably enjoyable.

Toula, as the film’s narrator, is probably the closest the film gets to a real person, thanks in large part to Nia Vardalos’s writing and performance. Vardalos plays Toula with a fantastic knack for deadpan and a real sincerity about her that makes her a likable and identifiable woman. Her insecurity post-makeover, pre-engagement is particularly noteworthy. It’s everyone around her that I found annoying and worse, poorly drawn. The relatives are all stereotypes (but no one is gay!), funny accents and idiosyncrasies, from father to annoying cousin. Her aunts are all busybodies, her uncles all drink Uzo, everyone is in everyone’s face…they stop just short of having Baklava all over their faces and wearing togas. The character who lacks the most, though, is the betrothed, poor Ian himself.