Rent My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (2023)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

While it’s been some time since I’ve caught up on the lore of the Greek Wedding saga, there’s probably not much I’m missing out on by recapping the characters and events. The third entry has the same tone and energy as the recent sequels to Mamma Mia and The Book Club. It’s a destination wedding that doesn’t expand on the already established characters so much as it finds busy work for them on a vacation destination. Having seen the aforementioned film with the same premise, Greek Wedding 3 is the least interesting in how little it finds to do between showcasing the destination amid its meandering sight-sighting excuse for a script.

The premise is shaky, where the Portokalos is off to Greece amid a death in the family. A reunion is at hand as the surviving family takes off for the old country to experience an old village. The busy work is the ulterior motive of spreading the ashes of the dearly departed Gus and revitalizing a village’s popularity with the prospect of a wedding. Notice how these motivations don’t pass until much later in the film. Until then, the bulk of the ensemble engages in all the vacation antics of conversion with quirky locals, swimming on the beach, eating all the food, and drinking all the wine. It’s all the fun stuff one would expect to do on a wondrous vacation in Greece, except you don’t get to do it and watch actors meander through these vistas with the thinnest of scripts to trot along.

The stakes are so low, even by the small bar of the Greek Wedding saga. The family stays at an old-fashioned Greek village, where it’s common for goats to wander into houses randomly. Little friction with the locals or wildlife results in a handful of surprised reactions and mild scoffing from the aged Greek grandmas roaming about. Personal conflicts are resolved far too quickly, where there’s little drama to be invested with. An estranged son is revealed to the family and is eventually accepted after some slow and sincere talks. A quirky assistant tour guide is revealed to be non-binary, and there are zero issues with their admittance in an old-fashioned village. The wedding to revitalize the village falls into place in a snap, and the individual issues of the ensemble are all addressed less like an organic flow of growth and more like checking boxes off a laundry list.

What are we left in the film if there’s no drama worth caring about? Well, there are some nice sights. The views from the beach look nice, and the road trip looks like a fun journey. An evening of dining on fine Greek food and drinking wine sounds like a doozy of a diversion. But that’s all this film ends up being, transforming into a semi-travelogue with bare-bones drama to make the film not appear as meandering. The problem is that Greek Wedding needs to realize it’s not the only light-hearted destination wedding movie out there that cavorts with the thinnest plotlines. As passive as I found Book Club 2 and Mamma Mia 2 passive, they still had something carrying them. Book Club 2 had silly road trip moments, and Mamma Mia 2 had its trademark ABBA musical numbers return amid the romance. What does Greek Wedding have to offer? A running gag about goats? The village’s cold shower? A detour to a nightclub? These are not major draws in a film where it’s too crowded by a stacked cast (Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Louis Mandylor, Elena Kampouris, Gia Carides, Joey Fatone, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin) who can hardly breathe amid all the sights to behold and ho-hum gags to be evoked.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is a small, thin, tasteless event. It has all the appeal of a big family vacation where you tolerate the worst because so much money is being spent on the trip, and you don’t want to rock the boat. You grit your teeth and endure the boredom for the promise of having some authentic Greek food and witnessing some real Greek locations. That splendor may be enough for some viewers, but the lack of even the faintest of dramatic hits or the mildest of gimmicks left me longing for something as feckless as Book Club 2, a thought I never thought I’d have. I’d recommend not booking this trip for your next night in with the gals while guzzling wine; you’re better off watching documentaries on Greece, considering you get to see all the sights without any of the piss-poor melodrama.