Movies from the Heart—My Big Fat Greek Wedding

I love the story of how this film came to be. It’s one of those Hollywood stories that just amaze you, because it’s so full of chance.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding [2002] by Nina Vardalos, started out as a play performed in the basement of a church. It happened to be Tom Hanks’s church and while he didn’t see it, his wife, Rita Wilson happened to be in the audience with a friend one night. She loved it and went home and told Tom it would make a great movie and that he should have his company do it.

And he did. And Rita became a producer on the project. There are all kinds of producers. There are producers who fund a film, producers who work closely with the director on the film, and producers who have the idea to make something into a film. This is why you see an average of about 14 producers on the credits for most films!!

But luckily for Nina Vardalos, Tom listened to Rita and made the film. His company gave it a $5 million budget—which, trust me, was absolutely miniscule for making a film in 2002. But at the end of the day, the film made close to $400 million. That’s right, an 8000% return on its investment. It’s mindboggling.

Take a look at the trailer for the film.

It’s a cute premise, right? And it really happened to the writer, Nina Vardalos. The screenplay was even nominated for an Academy Award—something that doesn’t often happen to comedies. And it’s spawned two sequels to date—both of which have also been very successful.

So what is it? What is it that resonated so much with audiences?

At its heart, it’s about a crazy family and why they find it difficult to accept a potential son-in-law who is not of their ‘kind’—he’s not Greek. Now, you could substitute any ethnicity for Greek and the film would still work. My Big Fat Italian Wedding, My Big Fat Romanian Wedding, My Big Fat Korean Wedding, etc., etc.

And that’s the key. An outsider wants to get into this family that is super leery of outsiders. They’re so leery, in fact, that it’s expected that when you marry you marry within your own ethnicity. This could, of course, be a drama and become almost Godfather-esque in its desire to not let the wrong sort of person into the family.

But play it for laughs, as Nina did with her script, and you have an absolutely charming story of how one set of ideas about family and marriage comes up against another. So it becomes hilarious and touching at the same time. Because, well, it’s a romantic comedy, so you know that the two lovebirds are going to end up together.

Sometimes, fulfilling the obvious end to a story can work extremely well if the writing is good enough—and that’s what happened here.

Next week, we’ll look at another great romantic film, and this one’s set at Christmas: Love, Actually.

Copyright © Diane Lake

09Jun24

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