My Big Fat GrΣΣk WΣdding 3

 I recently saw My Big Fat GrΣΣk WΣdding 3. OK, typing that every time I need to say it is going to get exhausting. Also, Σ is the Greek character Sigma, the equivalent of the latin character S, so although it looks cool, the franchise is actually called My Big Fat Grssk Wsdding.

From this point on:

My Big Fat GrΣΣk WΣdding (the movie and the franchise; work out which from context) – MBFGW

My Big Fat GrΣΣk WΣdding 2 – MBFGW2

My Big Fat GrΣΣk WΣdding 3 – MBFGW3

There's a mistake in every 

I have two main problems with this movie. The first is the marketing, which was sparse at best. I’m not like Duke Cody; I don’t have a phone alert for the word “movie”, but I do consider myself reasonably ear-to-the-ground regarding major releases.

However, in this case, I didn’t see anything at all promoting the movie. No trailers, no posters, no nothing. If I hadn’t happened to see a single poster for the movie on the side of a bus stop, I probably wouldn’t even have known about it. And I only saw that once the movie was already out!

Granted, the last two movies I saw in the cinema were The Super Mario Bros Movie and Blue Beetle (both of which are great movies worth watching), so MBFGW3 probably wouldn’t fall under ‘These trailers were specially chosen for this film’ in either case.

However, the trailer for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget has shown up in my YouTube feed, and that movie doesn’t even come out until next year! Side note: the movie looks great, but a lot of the voices sound off due to the multiple recasting. Also, I think that the woman in the trailer is not Mrs Tweedy but is in fact her daughter.

So that’s my first big gripe with the movie. I’ll explain the second later on, but first a minor niggle: it’s not set on the island of Kalokairi. This is the first MBFGW movie actually set in Greece, so it would have been fairly easy to set the movie there with just a few lines of dialogue changed.

Geography buffs: What’s Kalokairi? It’s not a Greek island; we’d know if it was.

Movie buffs: Kalokairi isn’t a Greek island?

Me: You’re both wrong, and you’re both right. Kalokairi is a Greek island; it just isn’t real. It’s the main setting of both Mamma Mia movies but is in reality the beautiful island of Skopelos (We are not sponsored by the Skopelos Tourist Board – Ed.). MBFGW3 doesn’t need to be set there, but if it was, it would add the three MBFGW movies to the MMCU, which would be fun and allow the possibility of a crossover movie.

Before we get to my second problem, we need to do a bit of a recap (these plots are severely cut down for clarity):

In MBFGW, a Greek woman (Toula) falls in love with an American man (Ian), much to her large family’s dismay. Eventually, her family accepts him, he proposes and the rest of the movie centres around the titular wedding/preparation.

In MBFGW2 (set 13 years later), Toula and Ian are happily married with one daughter (Paris)

It’s worth mentioning that although Toula’s family is huge (she has 27 first cousins), very few of them are actually named characters with lines. Fun fact: in the first movie, in the actual wedding scene, the majority of Toula’s family are played by Nia Vardalos (writer/Toula)’s real family.

Recap over!

In MBFGW3 (set one year after MBFGW2), the family patriarch (Gus) is dead (this is almost certainly because Michael Constantine died in real life), but his living relatives are invited to a reunion of the town in Greece where he was raised. This means that the movie really only centres around the main family members.

When they arrive, they are met by the self-proclaimed mayor of the town (Victory), who sent the invitations. She is convinced that despite the fact that it is two days until the reunion and no one else has turned up yet, the reunion will be a huge success. Anyone calling this delusion or blind optimism clearly hasn’t seen a feel-good movie before.

Whereas the first movie only followed Toula’s story and the second followed two stories (Gus and Maria’s wedding and Paris preparing for college/Toula and Ian coming to terms with this), MBFGW3 follows several storylines:

• Toula trying to find 3 of Gus’ old friends to invite them to the reunion
• After she hits several dead ends, Toula’s cousin Nicky and her husband Angelo finding the friends and inviting them and lots of other people
•  Toula’s brother Nick trying to scatter his father’s ashes in secret
• A woman from the town (Alexandra) revealing that she is the mother of Toula and Nick’s half-brother Peter
• Toula’s aunts, Voula (“I will be your favourite”) and Frieda trying to set Paris up with Aristotle, a boy she went to college with
• Paris hiding from her family that she failed her first year of college
• A fountain is blocked and villagers/family members are employed to remove the blockage 

You may have noticed a slight problem. Is it Big and Fat (used synonymously in this context)? It takes a while, but yes. Is it Greek? Yes, it’s set in Greece. So where’s the titular wedding?

MBFGW was about Toula and Ian (the main characters)’s wedding and MBFGW2 was about Gus and Maria (Not technically the main characters, but probably B+ Tier, if not A- Tier characters)’s wedding.

MBFGW3 is mostly about the six plots above, so logically it would make the most sense to have the wedding be for the two romantically involved characters, Paris and Aristotle. However, I have falsely advertised the story with my description because the will they/won’t they situation with those two characters only settles into a They Might about 5 minutes before the end of the movie, after the titular wedding.

Enough teasing! Just tell us who gets married already! – Ed.

Fine. The characters who get married are Peter’s son Christos and a Syrian immigrant Qamar, who are D Tier characters who spend most of the movie in a relationship which is secret from Alexandra, but gradually other characters learn about it until Nick finally blurts it out at a family dinner with the whole village (pop. 6).

In pretty much the next scene, Christos announces that they are engaged, so they just change the reunion party to a wedding party, except for a huge banner which Victory refuses to take down.

There are approximately two scenes between the engagement announcement and the actual wedding, which is neither Big nor Fat (again: Pop. 6), so the party only really starts when Nicky and Angelo arrive with about 50 people in tow.

During the dancing, Frieda tells Paris that she (Paris) dreamt about Aristotle, which Paris is shocked that she knows. Frieda reveals that she put some herbs under Paris’ pillow to make her dream about her true love, so she resolves the will they/won’t they situation by agreeing to take it slow with Aristotle.

Also, there is a running joke through the whole movie that the town has a population of only six people. However, I counted them:

1. Victory – The mayor, elected by one vote.
2. Alexandra – The town matriarch, former lover of Gus
3. Peter – Alexandra’s son and Toula/Nick’s half-brother
4. Christos – Peter’s son, mother never mentioned
5. Qamar – A Syrian refugee

Who is the sixth? There’s a monk who appears from time to time, but I don’t think he technically lives in the village.

You might read all this and think that I didn’t like the movie, but that’s not true at all. I thought it was a great movie with a lot of heart and a fair amount of decent laughs. Don’t go in expecting high cinema, but if you just want a good time, watch MBFGW3.

Is it as good as the other two? Possibly, but I don’t think you’re comparing like with like. The series has stopped being about weddings and is now just about the family, which is what it was always best at.

Final note, I promise: This movie contains several instances of ‘ussies’ being taken with the subjects ‘blowing away’ the camera. Is this actually a subtle conspiracy to bring back Duckface? You decide.

Supermodels!