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Archive for the tag “2002”

Crossroads

Day Six of the Two-Week Torturefest

Oh baby, baby / How was I supposed / To know / That “Crossroads” wasn’t that bad….

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Directed by: Tamra Davis
Written by: Shonda Rhimes
Lucy Wagner: Britney Spears
Kit: Zoë Saldana
Mimi: Taryn Manning
Also Starring: Anson Mount, Dan Aykroyd, Justin Long, Kim Cattrall

Distributed by Paramount Pictures on February 15, 2002. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 94 minutes. Rated PG-13 by the MPAA–mature themes, sexual situations, infrequent language, infrequent teen alcohol use.

Crossroads was watched on January 18, 2013.

“I’m not a girl,
Not yet a woman.
All I need is time,
A moment that is mine,
While I’m in between.”
–”I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” by Britney Spears

I guess I can own up to that I don’t exactly hate Britney Spears’s music. I don’t love it either. Okay, fine. In all honesty, I do absolutely love some of her songs. “…Baby One More Time”, “Oops!…I Did It Again”, “Toxic”, “Break the Ice”, and “Womanizer” are all very fun to listen to.

But she’s a singer. Not an actress, a singer. I had very low expectations for 2002′s Crossroads. Rotten Tomatoes reports that a mere 14% of critics “liked it.” The film was nominated for eight Razzie Awards and was “awarded” two–Worst Actress for Britney, and Worst Original Song for her “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”. You get the picture.

The film intends to be a comedy-drama. While it didn’t achieve in the way it intended, it did have a dramatic coming-of-age/soap opera story, with several maliciously funny scenes featuring poor acting, cat fights, and what have you.

Crossroads doesn’t mean any harm. Even if she has no clue how to write one, at least Shonda Rhimes, the writer behind it all, has seen a good movie and can put her finger on it. The film is essentially Thelma & Louise except fitted for an audience of early teenage girls, not quite as witty, burdened by clichés and a predictable story, and–as a result of all this–not nearly as memorable. Oh yeah, there’s three not-girls-not-yet-women (?), as well, not two women.

The story centers around this ring of BFFs. Totally BFFs. When they’re in sixth grade, they bury their “memories” (material objects that will trigger nostalgia at an older age) and design a pact to open it back up at 12:00 AM the day they graduate high school. This is the film’s prologue, and the rest takes place on graduation night. Somehow, they all still remember the pact, and they are, in fact, still friends. (How’d that happen?)

Upon digging up the box, one of the items brings the group into a discussion about one of the girl’s longtime wishes: to go to California (they live in Louisiana) with a boy she doesn’t even know, and pursue a career there. Now let me add some background. The girl who had this aspiration is five months into an unplanned pregnancy, the result of a drunken one-night stand with someone she knew for no more than an hour or two.

You’d think she’d have some common sense, but no, they all hop in the car with a guy who has supposedly committed murder, and make a spontaneous cross-country trip.

Crossroads takes too many risks, most of which try to convince us what really isn’t believable at all. As soon as Britney sets eyes on the guitar player, twenty minutes through, there’s more than a slight notion that they’re going to be a couple by the end. She spends half the movie in his car, giving him longing looks. It’s a huge movie cliché, for those who aren’t familiar, and to say it’s foreshadowed is a gross understatement.

Not to mention, she’s the Valedictorian. How we are supposed to believe this, I’m not sure, but I kept assuring myself with the thought that her high school either a) doesn’t show concern in its students’ transcripts until their GPAs bottom down lower than 1.5; or b) grades based on beauty, not brains (though she did know how to fix a car).

I’ll admit the film can be fun. Half the time, it’s very fun. It isn’t, however, an easy one to recommend. You could just as easily groan yourself to death over the stereotypes it relies on to tell its story.

C

From Justin to Kelly – two “American Idol” stars–blah.

This review was brought to you by…
TWTF

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Review No. 405

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The Bottom Line: A step up (and further) from the first entry.

Directed by: Chris Columbus
Screenplay by: Steve Kloves
Based on: “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter: Daniel Radcliffe
Ron Weasley: Rupert Grint
Hermione Granger: Emma Watson
Rubeus Hagrid: Robbie Coltrane
Albus Dumbledore: Richard Harris
Severus Snape: Alan Rickman
Draco Malfoy: Tom Felton
Minerva McGonagall: Maggie Smith
Gilderoy Lockhart: Kenneth Branagh
Also Starring: Fiona Shaw, Jason Isaacs, John Cleese, Julie Walters, Richard Griffiths, Warwick Davis

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures on November 15, 2002. Produced in English by the United Kingdom and the United States. Runs 161 mins. Rated PG by the MPAA for scary moments, some creature violence and mild language.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was watched on January 28, 2013.

“It is not our abilities that show us what we truly are. It is our choices.” –Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris)

NOTE: If you are not familiar with the Harry Potter series, I would advise reading my review of the previous film before reading this review.

It’s quite clear why director Chris Columbus signed off the Harry Potter series after its second entry, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I imagine that when he read the screenplay for the first installment, he imagined exactly the result he produced: a giddy, upbeat, wholesome opening to the series. And that’s completely all right. Essentially, Sorcerer’s Stone is nothing more than two and a half hours of introduction to the setting and characters we must know for the rest of the series. The story is less of a concern; it’s nothing more than a rehash of mythological stories, tied with those original elements.

Chamber of Secrets is darker, deeper, more involving. I can’t imagine Columbus knew ahead of time that this would be by far his most intense work. That is, of course, given that most his films are family-friendly; this is family-oriented, but to use any hint or permutation of the word “friendly” seems a bit strange. Whereas Voldemort, the dark wizard who murdered Harry’s parents, is mentioned and eventually encountered in Sorcerer’s Stone, he’s an omnipresent concept in Chamber of Secrets. The perils are much greater and (for one who has not seen the film previously, or read the books) entirely unexpected. Okay, perhaps that’s some exaggeration.

Harry’s second year at Hogwarts does not start off great. Even during the summer before he is due to leave, a sprightly, scrawny house-elf named Dobby has tried every method to prevent him from going back. But even if Dobby tries to hoard Harry’s letter exchanges with his friends, Harry is desperate to go back to his only get-away from Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. He is even willing to serve detention on his first day back at Hogwarts, because he risked exposure of the Wizarding World to the ordinary world. Little does Harry know that he has arbitrarily chosen imminent death over a life in hell. Is this a good decision? Well, if Harry died, at least he’d have a good shot at being a ghost roaming around Hogwarts.

The rumor of the “Chamber of Secrets” is re-spreading when Harry arrives. According to legend, Harry learns, the Chamber was opened by a co-founder of Hogwarts fifty years before, as a means of ridding those born of non-Wizarding parents with a deadly beast. At first, no one believes that the Chamber has been opened yet again. For that matter, no one has a clue where it is, or if the rumor is anything more than an urban myth spreading around the school. But then, slowly but surely, strange occurrences are realized. Many students have been petrified, and there are constantly blood-written messages on the wall at the end of one specific hallway. The rest of the school believes that Voldemort is back for another attack, which means he is inevitably after Harry Potter, who survived an initial attack due to his parents’ sacrifice. The issue only gets worse when Harry’s only staff-oriented friend, Hagrid, is framed and sent to prison; the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is nothing more than an obvious conman (that’s the well-cast Kenneth Branagh); and Professor Dumbledore, the school’s headmaster and the only man Voldemort has ever feared, has been forced to take a leave of absence.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is an excellent continuation on its initial work. More characters are introduced, but the same progression is maintained (if extrapolated on almost immensely). We open up with the more comical attitude. Not only do we get more of the obnoxious, stupid, greedy relatives Harry lives with, we are introduced to the Weasley family in depth. Arthur Weasley, the head of the family, earns a lot of laughs due to his working at the Ministry of Magic (basically the government surrounding Hogwarts). He takes much interest in the non-magical folk, being both born and married to the opposite demographic. “Can you tell me, Harry,” he asks in one scene. “What is the function of a rubber duck?”

Steve Kloves’s writing transitions well into the more ominous side. Unfortunately, the writing crumbles a bit after that. Much of J.K. Rowling’s writing is brilliant due to her extraordinary use of foreshadowing. It’s one thing to adapt it into the movie version; it’s another to completely obliterate it with a revealing moment no more than two minutes later. What’s worse, this happens all throughout Chamber of Secrets. The film does well in staying in the “family movie” area, while still maintaining the gravity of the books. If more time had been devoted to airbrushing several of those “spooky” qualities that make a tale so unsubtle and crafty, it could have worked out so much more nicely.

B PLUS

UHF

Gosford Park

Review No. 392

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The Bottom Line: It’s a murder mystery?

Directed by: Robert Altman
Written by: Julian Fellowes
Idea by: Robert Altman and Bob Balaban
Mrs. Croft: Eileen Atkins
Jennings: Alan Bates
William McCordle: Michael Gambon
Mrs. Wilson: Helen Mirren
Constance Trentham: Maggie Smith
Also Starring: Charles Dance, Clive Owen, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson, Jeremy Northam, Kelly Macdonald, Kristin Scott Thomas, Richard E. Grant, Ryan Philippe, Stephen Fry

Distributed by USA Films on January 4, 2002. Produced in English by the United Kingdom and the United States. Runs 137 minutes. Rated R by the MPAA for some language and brief sexuality.

Gosford Park was watched on January 16, 2013.

“If there’s one thing I don’t look for in a maid, it’s discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.” –Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith)

It seems I watched Gosford Park almost by mere mistake. Did I know of it? Sure, as a multi-Oscar nominee back in 2002. What I didn’t know about it was what it intended to be. Summarized, this is an interesting story. It’s a murder mystery set in 1932 Britain, whilst also detailing the lives of the rich and their servants during the period.

Less than a decade after its release, writer Julian Fellowes created TV’s Downton Abbey. I have yet to watch a single episode of the series, but knowing that it was inspired heavily by Gosford Park, I wouldn’t imagine myself ever getting hooked.

Gosford Park commences with a promise. It sets up with a robust, vivid, audacious tone. The performances are magnificent, the costumes are impeccably designed for the time period, the music is a continuous serenade, and the cinematography looks as if it was captured through the eyes of Da Vinci.

This continues throughout the film. It’s not the artistic manner itself that dies down, but rather a banal effect that results from ponderously underwhelming substance. It’s like constantly switching between art and history museums, constantly hearing the same music in the elevators; only kept awake by the intriguing, strangely witty crowd of people that surround you.

There’s an irony that surrounds Gosford Park. It is (supposedly) a murder mystery, yet there’s virtually no onscreen violence. Count me in for this. I’m all for a mystery that feels no need to use action in order to gain intrigue. The problem here is that I can’t even discern why exactly Gosford Park has earned the respect of a mystery of any sort.

There’s a light mood to the film. It’s rather subtly humorous, but enough to crack a smile and slightly amuse. Most of this, as you might guess, is because the drama uses its entire first act developing its characters as witty, soft spoken men and women, all of ‘em gathered at a wealthy family’s shooting party one fine weekend.

The second act suggests murder more than anything in the first act (not that that’s saying much). This is where I was left cold. From the very beginning, the story is self-established as one detailing the lives of the rich folks upstairs, as paralleled with those of their servants downstairs, yadda yadda yadda. Yet each demographic introduces so many characters–let alone familiar faces–it’s a challenge trying to keep up with everything that happens, and not grow distracted from the main point of the movie–which, evidently, is the murder mystery.

The murder comes very close to absolutely no explanation at all. I love movies that raise questions. I don’t appreciate it when movies like Gosford Park believe they have to raise numerous questions that shouldn’t need to be asked to begin with, and could have very easily. First off, who committed the murder? Was it a conspiracy? They all seemed pretty sketchy, but you can never be so sure. Was the discussion of committing murder without actually being aware a joke or a dead-serious assertion? Was this all intended as a figurative story, and I instead took it to heart in a technical manner? Perhaps these were, in fact, answered and I somehow missed them. Considering how straightforward Gosford Park is, the chances are repulsively slim.

I am glad I watched Gosford Park. No, it didn’t meet my expectations, nor would I recommend it. There were bright spots–even in the long-winded screenplay, there were spurts of humor. My main ability to finish the film was due to the top-notch acting. But only in the rarest of cases can an actor or actress make up for the rest of a lukewarm drama.

I look to what most other critics say about the film and find myself in some sort of cross between disgust and confusion. Gosford Park is a film that I can imagine having a safe, quick trip out of my memory. And frankly, I wouldn’t be willing to give it a visa back into my mind. Not for all the tea in China (or Britain).

C

The Royal Tenenbaums

Review No. 390

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The Bottom Line: Royal.

Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
Royal Tenenbaum: Gene Hackman
Etheline Tenenbaum: Anjelica Huston
Chas Tenenbaum: Ben Stiller
Margot Tenenbaum: Gwyneth Paltrow
Richie Tenenbaum: Luke Wilson
Eli Cash: Owen Wilson
Henry Sherman: Danny Glover
Raleigh St. Clair: Bill Murray
Pagoda: Kumar Pallana
Dusty: Seymour Cassel
Also Starring: Amedeo Turturro, Andrew Wilson, Aram Aslanian-Persico, Irene Gorovaia, James Fitzgerald
Narrated by: Alec Baldwin

Distributed by Touchstone Pictures on December 14, 2001. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 109 minutes. Rated R by the MPAA for some language, sexuality/nudity and drug content.

The Royal Tenenbaums was watched on January 13, 2013.

“Why would a reviewer make the point of saying someone’s NOT a genius? Do you especially think I’m NOT a genius? You didn’t even have to think about it, did you?” –Eli (Owen Wilson)

Writer-director Wes Anderson is a walking contradiction. His quirky, comedic-dramatic style is completely original due to the specific style on which it relies; yet it’s so broadly recognizable, it’s almost a genre of its own. Thematically, Anderson’s filmography is a flat, continuous line, composed of a substance he’s relied on since 1996; but each entry, as a disambiguation, is something just as candid and new as the one that preceded it. His abstract is usually small-town, quiet, and familiar to just about anyone; while the canon he is continuously developing features some of Hollywood’s most prestigious names. You see where I’m going here?

Anderson opens up The Royal Tenenbaums with just as much absurdity. The narration straightforwardly and amusingly constructs the tale of a family full of prodigies. The Tenenbaums. As children, they seem fine, isolated around a large house as they work on their tremendously implausible talents.

Fast-forward twenty years. These children are grown, some married, all moved out into different homes than one another. They’re just as unaware of each others’ existence as they were at any prior age, just as understanding of each other as predator to prey. We suddenly realize how estranged they all are.

None of the Tenenbaums realize this depressing truth until the patriarch, Royal Tenenbaum, announces that he has cancer. All of a sudden, these brothers and sisters are forced to love, let alone meet each other in a matter of six weeks. They simply cannot face what it means to be a family, as if addicted to dysfunction. Some try and escape, but only end up with physical injuries, injuries more apparent to them than the ones that have brutally scarred them all since their respective births.

The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson’s genius at hard work. Save for the ending—a predictable and over-rushed affair—his and Owen Wilson’s joint-effort screenplay is a brilliant paragon of comedy-drama. The setup doesn’t seem like much when it first appears in the first five minutes of the film. It seems like a quirky elaboration on several children ready to win Noble Prizes at any moment.

But there’s much more to it. What our co-writers are doing is making us care about the characters and their stories early on. What does it matter? Once the tragedy is realized, there is a deeply human amalgamation of dark humor and emotion. The Royal Tenenbaums is thus a heavy parable, focusing directly on the further issues created by a dysfunctional family, where laughing and crying go hand-in-hand.

“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin’ the cemetery?” –Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman)

A MINUS

Eight Crazy Nights

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Bottom Line: Light the menorah and burn this worthless “comedy”!

Directed by: Seth Kearsley
Featuring the Voices of: Adam Sandler, Austin Stout, Jackie Titone, Rob Schneider

“My comedy is different every time I do it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” –Adam Sandler

Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights does to Chanukah the same disservice that was shot at Christmas by debacles like Jingle All the Way and Deck the Halls. What’s so unfortunate about this is that I can’t think of many other Chanukah-centric films. Are there, or is it all A Christmas Story and Miracle on 34th Street? The film is such a disgrace, and it fails to recognize its own audience. As does the rest of Sandler’s work, this “comedy” runs wild with lewd and vulgar jokes that either revolve around bowel movements, sex, or that which offends. I can imagine an elementary schooler enjoying the juvenile schadenfreude presented here, but it’s torture for anyone as mature as Mr. Sandler should be. Not only is it boring, it’s offensive. If you happen to be Caucasian, Christian, African-American, Asian, elderly, epileptic, obese, female, alcoholic, and/or unintelligent, please avoid this multi-offense at all costs.

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The Pianist

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Bottom Line: A beautiful/disturbing serenade well worth watching.

Directed by: Roman Polanski
Władysław Szpilman: Adrien Brody
Also Starring: Ed Stoppard, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay, Jessica Kate Meyer, Julia Rayner, Maureen Lipman, Michal Zebrowski, Nomi Sharron, Richard Ridings, Wanja Mues

“An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.”
–”Daddy” by Sylvia Plath

We’ve heard it all too many times. “Never mention politics or religion, in polite conversation.” The two alone are likely to toss around reckless, harsh debate, but when combined, there is a grave, rather factual matter at hand. Proof: the Holocaust. You can joke all you want about religion, you can break politics down to its most absurd trivialities, but you can’t joke about something so horrifying. This has been set on film several times, namely by Louis Malle in Au revoir les enfants and by Steven Spielberg in Schindler’s List. You kind of have to expect Roman Polanski’s The Pianist to be just as gut-wrenching as his other pieces. Just like Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, it often comes as a surprise attack, particularly when using the onscreen genocide as a test of the audience’s inner strength. There’s something here that Polanski’s other films are lacking, however, and that is the story’s depth. We see the shoah through a singular man’s eyes, yet it’s sometimes more intricate than omniscient dramas.

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Insomnia

Bottom Line: Great cast, marvelous director, weak story.

Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, Jay Brazeau, Larry Holden, Lorne Cardinal, Martin Donovan, Nicky Katt, Oliver “Ole” Zemen, Paul Dooley, Robin Williams

An American remake of a foreign film.  When we hear that, it sounds like a simple concept, but that’s an overstatement.  We’re talking about an oddity here.  The two most common genres shipped over and re-fabricated by American directors are the horror and thriller genres.  Somehow, we can always expect the same results.  We’d be very surprised to see a Westernization of a foreign horror movie that wasn’t discovered in a dumpster or a landfill.  PROOF: The Grudge, based on Japan’s Juon; Quarantine, based on Spain’s REC; and The Uninvited, based on South Korea’s Janghwa, Hongryeon.  When we get a remake of a thriller, we are shown just about the exact opposite.  PROOF: The Departed, based on Hong Kong’s Wú Jiān Dào; The Debt, based on Israel’s HaChov; and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, based on Sweden’s Män som hatar kvinnor.  From the very start, we are aware of an automatic brilliance surrounding 2002′s Insomnia: a) it’s a remake of a 1997 Norwegian thriller, and b) it’s directed by Christopher Nolan, perhaps the greatest filmmaker exposed within the past decade and a half.  Now let’s be clear: this isn’t Nolan’s typical film.  We’ve relied on him to put something new on display, and after seeing his entire filmography (save for The Prestige), I’ll honestly say that although it is very dense and involving, Insomnia is barely a step up from what we may gather from an episode of CSI.

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Red Dragon

Bottom Line: A worthwhile prequel to The Silence of the Lambs.

Directed by: Brett Ratner
Starring:
Anthony Heald, Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Emily Watson, Frankie Faison, Harvey Keitel, Ken Leung, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ralph Fiennes

When it first hit theaters in 1991, The Silence of the Lambs was a hit. To say the least, it is one of the only three films ever to clean up with the five most prestigious Academy Awards–something unheard of for a mid-February release, let alone a horror movie. After hesitation from Anthony “Hannibal Lecter” Hopkins, director Ridley Scott brought the story back with Hannibal, an overall needless sequel. Yet it seemed nobody realized that the originating film was a sequel in its own right. Many do not credit Brian Cox for his performance as the notorious villain in 1986′s Manhunter. That film, though seemingly overlooked by everyone other than its cult followers, is based on Red Dragon, the novel in which author Thomas Harris introduced Hannibal Lecter. Not until seven years after that publication was The Silence of the Lambs open for reading. I cannot assess Red Dragon in comparison to Manhunter, but having seen and far more than enjoyed The Silence of the Lambs, I’ll say it doesn’t present itself as a pointless remake. If there wasn’t one person utterly fascinated by Hannibal Lecter when he was popularized in Silence, I feel pity. The villain stood secondary in that film, and he only appeared onscreen for around sixteen minutes, but he still remains the picture’s most perturbing characteristic. His manipulative charm overall struck me as perhaps more unsettling than sequences that confirmed his cannibalistic nature. Yet he was so mysterious and he held such an undisclosed background. We needed a prequel, so why not re-adapt Red Dragon?

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Adaptation.

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Bottom Line: Twisted but unbelievably engaging analysis of film writing.

“If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life! And why are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it! I don’t have any bloody use for it!” –Brian Cox as Robert McKee

Directed by: Spike Jonze
Starring: Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage

Surreal comedy-drama covers two parallel stories. The first story is of Charles Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), a screenwriter perhaps best known for his work on films such as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. He is struggling to move forward with his next work, an adaptation of a novel entitled The Orchid Thief (which is credited as this film’s source material, as well). In the second story, we have Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), the author of The Orchid Thief. She makes her book up with information drawn from interviewing John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a man fascinated by orchids, who later becomes part of her personal life.

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding

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Bottom Line: Just another wedding movie. Except it’s a “big fat Greek” mess.

“You’d better get married soon. You’re starting to look…old!” –Michael Constantine as Gus Portokalos

Directed by: Joel Zwick
Starring: John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Nia Vardalos

Quirky romcom about Toula (Nia Vardalos), an American woman from a strictly Greek background. She is seemingly the only member of her large family who doesn’t appreciate being Greek, and no one in her family has ever loved anyone without 100% Greek blood. Toula, who works first as a waitress and later a travel agent, is thirty years old and finally meeting someone for whom she shares love. They plan to marry, but there is a huge problem from the rest of the family: her lover is not Greek.

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