My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is a 2016 American romantic comedy film directed by Kirk Jones and written by Nia Vardalos. The film stars Vardalos, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, Ian Gomez and Elena Kampouris. It is the sequel to the 2002 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Filming began in late May 2015 in Toronto.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
Theatrical release poster
Directed byKirk Jones
Produced by
Written byNia Vardalos
Starring
Music byChristopher Lennertz
CinematographyJim Denault
Edited byMarkus Czyzewski
Production
companies
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release date
  • March 15, 2016 (2016-03-15) (New York City)
  • March 25, 2016 (2016-03-25) (United States)
Running time
94 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$18 million[2]
Box office$90.6 million[3]

The film was released on March 25, 2016 by Universal Pictures. The film grossed $90.6 million worldwide against a $18 million budget.

Plot

Toula Portokalos-Miller's (Nia Vardalos) life is in shambles. Her travel agency and the family dry cleaners have closed due to the recession. The only business still open is the family restaurant that her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), still runs. Her husband, Ian (John Corbett), is the principal at their teen-aged daughter Paris's (Elena Kampouris) high school. Paris, who is applying to college, feels smothered by her close-knit clan, who constantly interfere in her life. Desperate for independence and privacy, she applies to schools across the country. Ian and Toula's marriage has become strained due to Toula's obsessive need to be involved in Paris's life and to "fix" whatever goes wrong in her family.

Meanwhile, Gus has convinced himself that he is directly descended from Alexander the Great and wants to write to an online ancestry site for confirmation. While sorting through his records, he discovers that his and Maria's (Lainie Kazan) marriage certificate was never signed by the priest, technically invalidating their union. His current priest isn't allowed to sign it but agrees to perform a new ceremony. Gus insists that he and Maria must marry again after fifty years together, but Maria wants Gus to propose properly. Gus refuses, infuriating Maria, who refuses to go through with the ceremony. Meanwhile, when Toula and Ian are on a date night to rekindle their romance, their family catches them making out in their car outside their house. After Gus lands in the hospital and Maria refuses to go, saying she is not his wife, Gus pleads for her to marry him again. This time she accepts.

Maria wants the wedding she never had and hires a wedding planner who quits after the rowdy family's choices become too outlandish. The whole family, including Ian's parents, Rodney and Harriet (Bruce Gray and Fiona Reid), and Angelo's business partner, Patrick, pitch in to make the wedding happen. Nick urges Angelo to tell his parents, Voula (Andrea Martin) and Taki (Gerry Mendicino), that Patrick is also Angelo's romantic partner. Gus's estranged brother, Panos (Mark Margolis) arrives from Greece as a surprise.

Paris has been accepted to Northwestern University in Chicago and NYU in New York City. She chooses Northwestern to please her mother, but Paris's great-grandmother (Bess Meisler) convinces her she should go to New York. Paris asks Bennett (Alex Wolff), a boy she has a crush on, to the prom. He is also Greek with an equally crazy Greek family. Prom is the same night as the wedding. Toula tells Paris she can go to the prom if she attends the reception later. En route to the church, Gus, Panos, and Taki arrive drunk after many shots of ouzo. Maria storms off to the vestry after seeing Gus acting foolishly, feeling he is not taking the wedding seriously. Panos tells Maria that Gus had confided to him his love for Maria, and the ceremony continues. Watching as Gus and Maria recite their vows, Ian and Toula privately renew theirs. At the prom, Paris and Bennett share their first kiss while slow-dancing.

At the wedding reception, Gus reads a letter from the ancestry site verifying that he is a descendant of Alexander the Great. Ian, however, realizes that Toula forged the letter to make her father happy. The movie ends with the entire family dropping Paris off at her college dorm in New York.

Cast
  • Nia Vardalos as Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos-Miller
  • John Corbett as Ian Miller, Toula's husband. In the first film, he worked as an English teacher. In the second film, he now works as the principal of the same school.
  • Elena Kampouris as Paris Miller, Toula and Ian's 17-year-old daughter
  • Lainie Kazan as Maria Portokalos, Toula's mother
  • Michael Constantine as Kostas "Gus" Portokalos, Toula's heavily stubborn father, who constantly pressures his family into getting married regardless of age.
  • Andrea Martin as Theia Voula, Toula's aunt and Maria's sister. Voula seems to fill the void left by the travel agency by taking an almost impertinent interest in her family's affairs. She tends to tell people disturbing stories about her medical issues and sex life with her husband Taki, much to Toula's annoyance.
  • Louis Mandylor as Nick Portokalos, Toula's brother, he worked in the kitchen in his father's restaurant and lived his life as a bachelor in the first film. In the second film, he is now married and has four sons.
  • Gia Carides as Cousin Nikki, Voula's daughter, Toula's cousin and best friend, and Paris's (and Ian's) godmother. After the dry cleaners' closed, she went to beauty school and opened a salon.
  • Gerry Mendicino as Uncle Taki, Voula's husband, and Angelo and Nikki's father.
  • Joey Fatone as Cousin Angelo, Voula's son and Toula's cousin. He runs a couple of small businesses with his "partner" Patrick, who his family soon learns is more than a business partner.
  • Bess Meisler as Mana-Yiayia, Toula's grandmother and Kostas's mother. She seems to have mellowed out into a more eccentric, but lovable elderly Greek woman, who no longer mistakes her family for Turks.
  • Stavroula Logothettis as Athena Portokalos, Toula's sister. In the first film, she was shown to have four sons, who are older in the second film, and has had two more kids.
  • Ian Gomez as Mike, Ian's best friend. In the first film, he worked as another teacher in the same school Ian works. In the second film, he now works as a cop for the Chicago Police Department and is married to one of Toula's cousins, whom he met at Toula and Ian's wedding in the first film.
  • Mark Margolis as Panos Portokalos, Kostas's brother from Greece
  • John Stamos as George, a fellow Greek who is a news anchor on television.
  • Rita Wilson as Anna, George's wife.
  • Alex Wolff as Bennett, Paris's love interest
  • Bruce Gray as Rodney Miller, Ian's father
  • Fiona Reid as Harriet Miller, Ian's mother
  • Jayne Eastwood as Mrs. White, the Portokalos' neighbor, who tends to complain about the Portokalos family's antics.
  • Kathy Greenwood as Marge, a neighbor and former classmate of Toula's. Alongside with Mrs. White, she makes fun of the Portokalos family for being loud and weird throughout the film.
  • Rob Riggle as Northwestern Rep
  • Ashleigh Rains as Wedding Planner
  • Jeff White as Patrick, Angelo's romantic and business partner.

Production

In a 2009 interview for her film My Life in Ruins, asked about a possible sequel to the 2002 hit romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos stated that she had an idea for a sequel and had started writing it, hinting that, like Ruins, the film would be set in Greece.[4]

Asked about a sequel again in a November 2012 interview, she stated:

Well, actually, yes. And it's only now that I've really become open to the idea. Over the years, I've heard from everybody about what the sequel should be. People next to me at Starbucks would say, "Hey, let me tell you my idea," and I'd be like, "Hey, I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee." I never thought much about it. But then when John (Corbett) and I recently sat down to do that interview (for the 10th anniversary edition), we laughed so hard through the whole thing. It made me think that it's time. He said, "Come on, write something, will you?" And I now think I will. We have such an easy chemistry together. And we have chemistry because we never "did it." That's the surefire way to kill chemistry in a scene. You have to make sure your actors don't "do it" off-screen. If they don't "do it," then they'll have chemistry on camera.[5]

On May 27, 2014, various news and media outlets reported that a sequel was in the works.[6] Vardalos later confirmed this via Twitter, and wrote the script for the film.[7] Universal Pictures acquired the US distribution rights to the film on November 11, 2014, and Kirk Jones was set to direct, based on the script by Vardalos, who also starred.[8]

Filming

Principal photography began on May 10, 2015 in Toronto, and ended on June 28.[9][10]

Release

In May 2015, Universal set the film for a March 25, 2016 release.[11]

Home media

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 21, 2016.

Reception

Box office

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 did not do well at the box office. It grossed $8.7 million in North America and $1.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $9.9 million, against an $18 million budget, making it a modest box office failure.[3]

In its opening weekend, the film was projected to gross $15 million from 3,133 theaters.[12] It grossed $7.2 million on its first day and $17.9 million in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million) and Zootopia ($24 million).[13] In its second weekend, the film grossed $11.2 million (a 37.2% drop), again finishing third behind Batman v Superman ($51.3 million) and Zootopia ($19.3 million).[14]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 28% based on 172 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is as sweet and harmless as the original, but its collection of sitcom gags and stereotypes never coalesces into anything resembling a story with a purpose."[15] Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 37 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[16] Polled by CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale.[13]

Possible sequel

In late June 2016, Vardalos hinted at the possibility of a third film, saying that although no writing has been done, she does have an idea.[17]

References
  1. "MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 (12A)". British Board of Film Classification. March 2, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
  2. D'Alessandro, Anthony; Tartaglione, Nancy. "'Batman V. Superman' Targets Second-Best Pre-Summer Global Opening With $350M". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  3. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 27, 2016.
  4. "Is a 'Big Fat Greek Wedding' Sequel in the Works?". ExtraTV.com. March 14, 2012. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  5. "Nia Vardalos: 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Star Talks Chemistry, Motherhood And Plans For A Sequel". The Huffington Post. November 12, 2012. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  6. Kit, Borys (May 27, 2014). "Nia Vardalos, Playtone Reuniting for 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Sequel". hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved May 22, 2015.
  7. "Nia Vardalos on Twitter". twitter.com. Retrieved May 22, 2015.
  8. McNary, Dave (November 11, 2014). "'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2' Heading for Universal with 'Nanny McPhee' Director". variety.com. Retrieved May 22, 2015.
  9. Bennett, Anita (June 28, 2015). "Nia Vardalos' 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2' Wraps Production". thewrap.com. Retrieved July 3, 2015.
  10. "'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2′ filming now in Toronto". onlocationvacations.com. May 26, 2015. Retrieved May 29, 2015.
  11. McNary, Dave (May 21, 2015). "'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2′ Set for March 25 Against 'Batman v Superman'". Variety. Retrieved May 22, 2015.
  12. "'Batman V. Superman' Targets Second-Best Pre-Summer Global Opening With $350". Deadline Hollywood.
  13. "'Batman V Superman' Looks To Punch Out 'Hunger Games' For Best Pre-Summer Debut With $157M-$170M". Deadline Hollywood.
  14. "'Batman V Superman's Knock-Down, Drag-Out Fight With The Box Office: 2nd Weekend At $52M+, -68%". Deadline Hollywood.
  15. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  16. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  17. Nia Vardalos Hints At My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. YouTube. June 29, 2016.
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