My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

I found this to be as funny as the classic “While You Were Sleeping”. It is rare, but it does happen, for sequels to have more humor than the original. I think Greek Wedding 2 is funnier than the first one (and that Ghostbusters 2 is funnier than the first one), and I am really glad I saw it out of curiosity in spite of thinking the trailer was un-funny. Nia Vardalos, writer and leading actress of the Greek Wedding movies, has come up with surprisingly original ideas, and continually throws new situations into the movie that defy expectations, while also including plenty of reiterations of the favorite jokes from the first one. This movie runs the gamut of so many types of relationships and keeps it all within a well-paced story, alongside a hilarious subplot where Toula and her relatives indulge her father’s boastful claim that he was a direct descendant of Alexander the Great, which leads to an attempt to prove it through an ancestry website. The PG-13 type of humor is very minimal and mostly revolves around one particular outspoken female relative who talks very frankly about having babies, and the story keeps issuing surprises about how long a particular family conflict is going to last. As soon as Toula’s daughter feels better about her family, other things go awry, for example. There are really meaningful, slow-paced relationship moments also, especially between Toula and Ian, who is now the school principal. As for the main plot, which is that Toula’s parents are at odds with each other because they discover that the priest back in Greece never signed the marriage license, it’s done in a way I feel is good taste, not the crude low-aiming sexual jokes. It is not simply a rehashing of the goofy characters, but actually a development of all of them, and Nia V. was probably right in her decision to wait until she was raising her own child before writing the sequel, because that made Toula’s daughter a much more relatable character and gave us an opportunity to see Toula work hard at being less of an overachiever, at stepping back and letting other people figure out their own problems for a change. I enjoyed the gentle charisma of John Corbett as Ian more on this than the first one. I felt like the first one was not all that well developed of a romance and owed its popularity to the cultural craziness, but the sequel does a better job at developing the relationships, including hers with Ian. It is a worthwhile journey I am sure I will want to repeat-Christopher Schwinger

So many people said not to watch it. I’m glad I did not listen. If you liked the first one, you’ll like the second one.

Everybody’s back. EVERYBODY. The premise is that Ian and Tula’s daughter is graduating high school, feels much like Tula in the first one – embarrassed and smothered by her family, even though she loves them. Meanwhile, it turns out Tula’s parents are not legally married. That’s cute.
They argue and bicker, but you know they’ll get married at the end.

SPOILERS: what else I found cute? You know how at the end of MBFGW Tula’s house is next to her parents? Turns out her brother and sister live in houses next to hers – all in a row. And you know the girl cousin who flirts with Ian’s friend (Nia’s real life husband)? Turns out they got married. Found that rather sweet.

What I didn’t like about it: Okay, in the first one, Tula’s goal was self-improvement – college, new career, new hair, makeup, new clothes, feeling good about herself. Well, in this one, she’s revereted back to her old ways. She looks like the frump we first saw in MBFGW, works at the restaurant (the travel agency has closed) and all she does is obsess about her daughter. She doesn’t take time for herself or develop new interests, it’s all about ‘What am I going to do when Paris goes away to college?’ And you know what she does? At the parents wedding, she turns to Ian and tells him how much she’ll miss their daughter, that the only thing she knows is how to be a mother, and joking-but-not-joking says, “Why don’t we adopt a baby? Think about it.” Instead of accepting that kids grow up and have their own lives and maybe starting her own travel agency or something, that’s the solution to her anxiety. Nothing wrong with adopting, but not as a solution to fill your empty nest.

On the whole, you’ll like it. It’s sweet, sentimental and fun.- Christine

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Nia Vardalos
Directors: Kirk Jones
Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: French, Spanish
Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: PG-13 Parents Strongly Cautioned
Studio: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: June 21, 2016
Run Time: 94 minutes