M is for My Big Fat Wedding 2

A movie review. And it even worked with the alphabet thing I’m trying to do this week.

I did it. I went and saw this movie, finally. I had heard it was bad, even from those blogs that I trust greatly, but, like most movies, there was more than entertainment involved. So I'll start with a question: When two men wed, how, in heck, do you have a bachelor party?

There’s a point in this, so hang on.

Do you have two parties? Do you have one big one with two strippers?

Or, you do what my best man did. You take the Bardbear and the HusOtter to see my Big Fat Greek Wedding. He had seen it two days prior to our wedding at the local flicka and called me immediately. That was what he was treating us to. We had to see this movie, he insisted.

And, as I’ve mentioned here prior. This movie was not interpreted by me as a comedy. It was a horror movie.

That's a joke. 

I detest when I do stereotypically gay things. Moreso because of my lack of confidence than for any injustice on my part. But I’ve also fought for the justice of all minorities to be pictured as more than the stereotype provides. My family? Irish. Jewish. Ethnic.

Every bit the same as the cookie cutter characters smeared on the screen in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Hence, a horror movie.

Heck, I probably could have called it a documentary.

And I loved it. Because, at the same exact time the film was unfolding, I was experiencing the same exact thing. My family went BALLISTIC over the concept of my getting married. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, the electricity at hit the central nervous system and the beast was upright and walking completely on it’s own. At first, I resisted, my own need to be in control slowly eroding to a family that was truly enjoying the proceedings. Here’s something they don’t teach you. You can, yes, get married in a courthouse. But a wedding? That’s with and for your family.

Especially when a few thousand years of tradition are brought to bear. Early cultures fought to keep themselves alive and supported, that meant marrying and having kids. That stuck in their craw, that kept them alive and that became the mantra; in their churches, in their culture, in their humor, in their art.

For every person who complains about gay marriage, it goes so far beyond the law. My family had trained me and told me this was the way the family was supported, regardless of gender.

This is getting kinda weighty for a movie review.

I saw that first movie and saw that dear Toula falling in the same pattern I had. My mother loved my wedding, my family did too. I was happy to let them have it. It was glorious.

Of course I would go and watch a sequel.

Was there something necessary in it? Here’s the deal with sequels, you can see it played out in the Marvel universe. There’s an underlying tale that has to be moved forward. Tales that deserve to be continually be told. There’s a reason we flocked to see Empire Strikes Back or the Godfather Part II. Heck, even Toy Story 2 and 3. We loved the character and the universe that they held together for us. However, there’s a reason for the sequel. It should nod to the past but continue with enough novelty to want to keep moving forward.

I bring this up, because, even though I have so much emotional invest in the franchise of My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s stereotypical characters, did I really need a sequel?

Yes, actually, I did. What a great opportunity to show how, even though they are stereotypical, they, too, can keep the Old World in line while looking forward to a rapidly changing culture that stretches before them. It would make sense.

Instead? Nothing. Toula has become what she loathed so much in the first movie, a frump, which we thought she rose above when she accepted herself. It was odd. Worse? She did all the things that her mother did to her, to her own daughter. Okay, I’ll get that, but where’s the family pointing that out?

The central premise of the film, that the war broke out in Greece and they fled before her parents were ACTUALLY married carries the weight of the film. At the same time, we have Toula exiting her frumpiness, again; her own stressors that she gives her daughter about going to college; and a cute little vignette about coming out to your Old World family. Yes, I’m a bit attached to this segment, but it’s given short shrift when it could have been a terrific center to the film.

But we’ve been here. And we’ve done this. And there was no new ground taken.

However, here’s the tic-I liked this sequel. I’m willing to forgive these faults due to the fact that I have so much in line with what was happening on the screen. Going away to college with four hundred people watching? Yeap. Guilt for breathing? In spades. Their gay character’s coming out was too short and quick to be real. But I will say, here, that there’s a reason why most countries in Europe are kinda cool with marriage equality. Because they value family. And because they dealt with homosexuality before the New World. They know gay people exist. They know it’s not that big of a deal.

Even in my family.

Is it a good movie? Not by the beats that I would find a film good. It's unnecessary, not particularly laugh-out-loud funny (more a jovial titter, maybe?), and all the strengths are absent that made the first movie so worthwhile. The stereotypes are thriving, but the protagonist, so learned in the first movie, becomes her mother and does the same things her own mother does...and she doesn't notice the how or why. Timelines jump (a wedding on prom night was too easy...make them on separate nights). I would have loved to have seen Toula holding her new self against the family, but still found that many of the conflicts are true. This is what happened in my own life. I struck out on my own, and was supported, but, surely, Ma was there with the same old comments, "why are leaving? Was it something I said?"

And while there are steps up-including the gay stuff and a cute part where the Greek stereotype meets a Chinese gentleman, an Iranian Man, and Jewish bloke (sounds like the beginning of a joke), and they slowly realize that ethnicity is pretty much the same, regardless of country. High expectations, food, tradition, belief, and family.

All things I love about my ethnic upbringing. Be who you are. But know there's good food to be had and wonderful traditions to be held. 

Peace.