My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Overview

Sequels to romantic comedies are rare. When a movie trades in the dream of finding love and living happily ever after, exploring what comes next tends to ruin the fantasy. That's the problem My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 faces as it endeavours to revisit the characters from its popular predecessor — and like Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Sex and the City 2, it struggles. Everyday relationship issues, coping with kids and the minutiae of marriage are more the domain of sitcoms than rom-coms, after all.

It's little surprise, then, that this return to the big fat Greek world wouldn't feel out of place on the small screen, rather than in cinemas. In fact, 2002's My Big Fat Greek Wedding already inspired one season's worth of television, My Big Fat Greek Life, back in 2003. The latest extension of the story ignores the TV series' existence, although it firmly follows in its footsteps. In fact, from the angsty teenaged daughter who wants nothing to do with her parents, to the demanding relatives who can't keep out of each other's business, it's the kind of fare you'd expect to watch in 30-minute weekly episodes in the comfort of your own living room.

After close to two decades together, Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) have well and truly settled into wedded bliss — and made themselves a little too cosy and complacent, they begin to realise. They try to reignite the spark in their romance; however Toula's obsession with where their only child, Paris (Elena Kampouris), will go to college doesn't help matters. Nor does the sudden need of her elderly mother (Lainie Kazan) and father (Michael Constantine) to throw their own wedding ceremony, after discovering that their marriage certificate wasn't formalised 50 years earlier.

Cue a second big fat Greek wedding, and an excuse to get the whole gang from the first film (including Australian actress Gia Carides) back together. The broader group is still a collection of walking clichés, with neither subtlety nor skirting stereotypes high on the film's list of priorities. Given that their antics are constantly commented on by a couple of snarky neighbours, observations about the difference between Greek and American culture provide the bulk of the movie's content. And while such obvious insights are clearly designed to be jokes by Vardalos, who writes as well as stars, they rarely inspire more than the occasional laboured chuckle.

And yet, Vardalos' honey-coloured view of her ancestry, the immigrant experience and the eccentricities of living with such a big, close Greek family as she wades further into middle age remain sweet, even if they're hardly amusing the second time around. There are traces of ragged charm to this Kirk Jones-directed effort, like slipping on an old item of clothing and finding it still technically functional – even if it is rather scruffy and well-worn. If the film's core couple are too comfortable, so is the sitcom-style sequel itself. It knows that recapturing its initial magic is a difficult task, but it also knows that it may as well try anyway — and doesn't even contemplate attempting something more.