My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 Blu-ray Review

• Director ‏ : ‎ Nia Vardalos
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Louis Mandylor, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ Spanish
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman
• Language ‏ : ‎ English (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1), Spanish (DTS 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Nia Vardalos
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Subtitled, Digital_copy
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 32 minutes
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Release date ‏ : ‎ October 31, 2023

         When My Big Fat Greek Wedding was released in 2002, it was a surprise hit with both audiences and critics, even earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It was followed up with the first sequel in 2016, which was such a disappointing decline in quality that it is surprising the franchise continued beyond that. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 feels like a cash-grab, made possible because most of the cast doesn’t have much else going for them. The results reek of desperation while none of the cleverness or creativity found in the original remains.

 

        While the first film dealt with the wedding between Greek-American Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) and her non-Greek fiancé Ian Miller (John Corbett), the first sequel invented a paperwork mistake requiring the Greek family’s matriarch and patriarch to have a wedding. Given the continued determination to keep the original title relevant, it should come as no surprise that the third film has shoehorned another wedding into the plot, however disconnected it is from the cast of characters audiences know from previous installments in the franchise.

 

        Although there is a wedding for the film’s climactic sequence, the plot first revolves around the Portokalos         clan traveling to a small town in Greece for a reunion. In reality, the reunion is a ruse to bring people back to the community. Keeping in line with the quirky sense of humor established by the franchise’s past films, the town is only made up of a few eccentric citizens, including the non-binary mayor, Victory (Melina Kotselou), who is also a distant relative to the family. Though the reunion is merely a ruse to bring the family to Greece, this plot device (and possibly the entire film) is even more obviously an excuse to bring this cast of iconic Greek-American characters to the country. That’s the extent of the logic in developing a plot, and it certainly shows in a film which could easily be mistaken for being a bad Mamma Mia! rip-off.

 

        The Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 comes with an additional DVD copy of the film, along with a digital code to stream the film. There are plenty of special features, though most are promotional filler best suited for die-hard fans. The best extra is a feature commentary track by writer/director/star Nia Vardalos, who is also featured heavily in the making-of featurette. There are also a handful of deleted and extended scenes, an extended take of the wedding drum song, and a gag reel of the cast making mistakes that are funnier than a majority of the film’s jokes.

 

Entertainment Value: 5/10

Quality of Filmmaking: 4/10

Historical Significance:  0/10

Special Features: 7/10