Made in 2002, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding's" box office was around $368 Million. It was a cheerful film and received mostly positive reviews. Purely based on this success, they wanted to suck the film dry by making a sitcom based on the same idea which failed after seven episodes, because there was nothing else left to tell. Here in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" there are two different stories which are harmonized with the lives of the family after 14 years. If you have seen the original film, you should remember that Ian (John Corbett) and Toula (Nia Vardalos) had a daughter. One side of the story focuses on her and her teenager problems and the other side focuses on the marriage of Toula's mother and father. Toula's father finds out that their marriage paper has never been signed. When Toula's mother learns about this, she demands to get married. After fifty years of being together, they get married as loud as Toula's marriage, like the title suggests. So, the story bounces back and forth between these two main stories and the relation between Ian and Toula. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" is still a warm-hearted story with all its sincerity but this is pretty much it. The film doesn't have any purpose anymore. Based on this idea, you can make as many films as possible and, eventually, people will stop seeing them. That being said, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2's" box office dropped drastically from $368 Million to $88.9 Million. People got the idea. They are a big family, they are funny and different and they have strong bonds but that's pretty much it. There is nothing else this family can give to the audience. Each character is easily predictable, which suggests the weakness of the screenplay. When you look carefully, the film has no aim anymore. They are planning a wedding and a lot of funny things are happening along the way. Those funny things are just the different versions of the same jokes from the original film.Cultural differences between Americans and Greeks are more obvious in this one. The film carries the message of the beauty of living together no matter how different we are. In "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2," everyone seems to be leading the film. The pressure over Toula is lifted but she is still struggling to keep everything together. This is time consuming and leads her to neglect her own family. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" focuses also on the marriage of Ian and Toula. The film has a lot of directions and the director Kirk Jones manages to keep them all together, but still he can't provide something new or different to the audience, which makes it an average film. It would be perfectly fine if they wouldn't have made the 2nd film. Cultural diversity was the strongest point of the first film. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" depends purely on this and fails to bring something on the table. The customs and behaviors are just repeating themselves. This is still tolerable because they are funny, but, once again, they are not new. This is the reason why I wrote above that no one would have missed a 2nd film based on the same idea. Even the locations are the same.Regarding the performances there is nothing new. Like in the first film I like Andrea Martin's acting performance. Andrea Martin's character, Aunt Voula, is a problem solver. She is a person everyone can depend on and one of the most important women in the family. It is an easy role to play but hard to make it perfect. Andrea Martin manages to make it perfect from the way she walks to the way she talks. If this film needs to be saved, she is there to do it. Other than her, I haven't seen a worth mentioning performance because, just like the 1st film, this one is not a character-based film either. This time I have enjoyed the soundtracks. Especially the Greek oriented ones. In most of the scenes I had the feeling that I am watching a European film.Once again, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" doesn't bring anything new on the table. Watching it is not a waste of time but don't have higher expectations. If you loved the characters and the story in the 1st film then watch this one to see how they are doing after 14 years. Written by Nia Vardalos and produced by Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Gary Goetzman, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" is a film of happy thoughts and a strong traditional family.

An amazing sequel to the previous 2002 movie.As a Greek-American living in Greece I can relate to these events from stories I have been told by my "Yiayia".Hilarious plot.The interference of new technology adds a great taste of modernity in the movie.On-point jokes and amazing stereotypical Greek characters.

The gang is all back in the surprisingly-delayed and unrequested sequel to one of the most successful independent films of all time (My Big Fat Greek Wedding still remains the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time, 5th highest grossing film from 2002, highest grossing film to never be #1 at the box office, and is quoted as being one of the most profitable films ever with a 6,150% return on budget). It's a wonder it took them so long to milk this cash cow a little further.The plot, as the title suggests (though isn't there a funner way to title the movie? I thought long and hard and came up with "My Bigger, Fatter, Greekier Wedding." Not bad, right?) follows our protagonist, Tula (Nia Vardalos) 17 years after the original. A lot has changed, but not too much. The punchline of the first film showed the newly-weds moving into the house next door to Tula's parents. In this film, nearly the whole block is occupied by the Portakalos clan. It's a wonder the local gawkers haven't been asked to relocate yet.You may remember Tula working as a travel agent, but given the current economy, we learn there is no need for such luxuries in the current Chicago market. Low and behold, she has retreated back to the family's restaurant. Talk about coming full circle.The titular wedding comes from Tula's parents, Gus and Maria, who find out through a bit of digging that their marriage 50 years ago was never certified by a priest. Cue wedding dress shopping montage. The additional drama comes from Paris, Tula and Ian's daughter, who is deciding whether to go to college in Chicago or flee to New York to claim sanctuary from her looney extended family.Tonally, the film is very much identical to the original, which is surprising given how little I enjoyed this film. Where the original found humor in the observations of a stereotypical Greek Orthodox family and an outsider's introduction to such a culture, the sequel lags and lags on jokes we already know. Windex cures all, the root of every word is Greek, and Aunt Voula is as zany as ever. Nia Vardalos in the leading role (and returning as screenwriter (the original earned her an Oscar nomination, no less)) is absolutely lost and a clunker of a star. Originally playing it relatively straight amidst the humor, here she gives way to potty humor and overacting galore. In the original, the film was charming and found humor through it. Here, she has written a weak comedy that she thinks will have the same effect.For being a sequel 14 years in the making, the production felt very rushed, and editing down to camera work is noticeably lacking. The script throws everything but the kitchen sink at us, including a tacked on bit where Joey Fatone reveals himself as gay on the morning of the wedding. Why, I am not sure. John Stamos was billed as a new addition to the cast (fairly genius casting given the film) but phones in a performance of about 5 minutes and promptly is never seen again.After the flop of the TV show (remember the season run of My Big Fat Greek Life?) and the poor reaction to this year's sequel, I think it has become clear that the 2002 hit was simply a flash in the pan, a film that stood on its own despite the studio want to squeeze every last nickel out of it's teat. Hollywood today is driven largely by sequels and reboots and cinematic universes. Maybe in 5 or 10 years we will see a remake. Sometimes though, lightning can only strike once.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 follows our main characters from the previous movie when they learn that their parents weren't officially married, and how they go about doing this. I have nothing good to say about this movie. Most everything was average, but there were a few things that stood out as exceptionally bad. To start, the movie advertises itself as a comedy, yet it fails to be funny. The parents were minor characters in the previous movie, so we got only a little bit of their humor every once in a while, and thus the humor never got old. But in this movie they take center stage, and they are boring. The whole joke becomes "they have an accent. Ha ha funny, right?" Most of the jokes from the previous movie aren't even incorporated. Occasionally we might get something, but it was already stale in the first movie, so it doesn't work anymore. Every other attempt at humor was often so far fetched it just didn't work, or just so cringey that it was hard to laugh through the disgusted face already spread across your face. Comedic references to the previous movie were made as well, but they were often much less original and simply existed as a reference. Moreover, they were often very forced scenes, again for the sake of a reference. Also, there's a daughter in this movie. I don't know why she's there, she starts out as the central conflict, but I guess when time restraints came in that part just ended and the main plot started. She acts all moody at first and hates her family and stuff, then without the usual formulaic scene where she gets over it and loves her family she just starts loving them anyway. There's this sudden shift from hate to love, and it's never explained and comes completely out of nowhere. Why? Because the movie couldn't balance two conflicts at once and time restraints. That's what I think, anyway. In fact, all the characters suck. The plot is made out to be a huge deal by these people, when it quite simply isn't. And the ending is so stupidly forced. It doesn't make any sense, but simply exists for the sake of following the cliché formula of wedding movies. It tries to force tears or at least some kind of feeling, yet it gives the audience no reason to get invested in any of these characters. The only feeling this movie induced was boredom. Yeah, there's nothing better than an unfunny, boring comedy, right? Wrong. Overall this is just a really bad movie. There's nothing good about it, but there's plenty to hate. The comedy isn't funny, and the characters are stupid and underdeveloped. And to top it off, it's boring. In the end I wouldn't recommend this movie. Just watch the first one again, or something else entirely.