Blu-ray Review: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

STUDIO: Universal | DIRECTOR: Kirk Jones | CAST: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Elena Kampouris, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides
RELEASE DATE: 6/21/16 | PRICE: DVD $16.99; Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD Combo $19.96
BONUSES: featurettes, gag reel
SPECS: PG-13 | 94 min. | Family comedy romance | 2.39:1 widescreen | DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1/Dolby Digital 5.1 | English, French and Spanish subtitles

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie  | Audio  | Video  | Overall

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 might not be the sequel we want, but maybe it’s the sequel we deserve.  This was an idea that occurred to me around the 1-hour mark, as I struggled to understand why a loving God would allow such a painful time-suck to be inflicted upon a hapless population.  Nia Vardalos (Dealin’ with Idiots) returns for another go-round as the sweetly insecure Toula—offspring of an oppressively large and clingy immigrant family—and John Corbett (The Boy Next Door) reprises his role as Ian, the WASP Toula has married against her family’s wishes.  Lainie Kazan (My Favorite Year) and Michael Constantine—two reliable screen veterans whose presence still can’t save this movie—once again play Maria and Gus, Toula’s well-meaning but overbearing parents.  Andrea Martin (Cannibal Girls) reappears as the wacky Aunt Voula, who provided the only few moments of genuine comic relief in this otherwise dreary snooze-fest.

This time around, the wedding in question is Maria and Gus’s.  It seems that their original wedding, which took place some fifty years ago, may not be valid because of a technical blah-blah-blah.  It doesn’t bear explaining more fully than that.  Other narrative strands focus on Toula’s anxiety as her daughter (Elena Kampouris) gets ready to leave home for college, the lackluster state of her marriage to Ian, one returning character’s struggle with his sexual identity…and so on.  I’m not sure which of these story-lines to label the “plot” and which the “sub-plots,” because in a movie as narratively slack as this one, these seem like arbitrary distinctions.  It’s enough to know that everything will ultimately work out for the best for all parties involved.

The DVD extras include a standard “Making Of” featurette, a “My Big Fat Greek Dinner” piece, which features a long, self-congratulatory on-set conversation with a handful of cast members (including Vardalos and Corbett), and a gag reel that might have been funny if any of the intentional gags in the completed film had hit the mark.  With so much content readily available these days, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is easy enough to skip.  You probably should.

Buy or Rent My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
DVD | Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD Combo