CTV NEWSCHANNEL: RICHARD’s MOVIE REVIEWS FOR SUNDAY APRIL 12, 2026!
I join CTV NewsChannel to talk about a modernized “Hamlet,” a reflective “Outcome” and an old-fahsioned rom com “You, Me & Tuscany.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Posts Tagged ‘Nia Vardalos’
CTV NEWSCHANNEL: RICHARD’s MOVIE REVIEWS FOR FRIDAY APRIL 10, 2026!
I join CTV NewsChannel’s Scott Hirsch to talk about a modernized “Hamlet,” a reflective “Outcome” and an old-fahsioned rom com “You, Me & Tuscany.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
YOU, ME & TUSCANY: 3 STARS. “relentlessly upbeat rom com with all that entails.”
SYNOPSIS: In “You, Me & Tuscany,” a new rom com starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page now playing in theatres, a directionless twenty-something woman crashes at an empty Italian villa and is mistaken for the owner’s fiancée.
CAST: Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page, Lorenzo de Moor, Isabella Ferrari, Aziza Scott, Marco Calvani, Nia Vardalos. Directed by Kat Coiro.
REVIEW: Coming hot on the heels of subversive romantic comedies like “The Drama,” “Anora,” “Materialists” and “Pillion” comes an old-school rom com that, for better and for worse, embraces the genres tropes.
“The Little Mermaid’s” Halle Bailey stars as Anna, an aimless twenty-something who gave up on her dream of becoming a chef after her mother died. When she loses her house-sitting job, and finds herself with nowhere to live, she impulsively decides to change her life after a chance encounter with Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), handsome Italian man with a villa in sun-drenched Tuscany.
“It’s not about him,” she tells BFF Claire (Aziza Scott). “He doesn’t even live there anymore, but he told me about his big old villa just sitting there… Empty.”
Uninvited, she plans on spending one night in the empty villa, but the plan is thrown into chaos when Matteo’s mother Gabriella (Isabella Ferrari) drops by without warning. Panicked, she poses as Matteo’s fiancée.
“You can pretend to be his fiancée or you go to prison,” says cab driver Lorenzo (Marco Calvani). “Either way, it’s very romantic.”
The situation gets even more complicated when Matteo’s cousin, Michael (Regé-Jean Page) arrives. As he encourages her to rediscover her passion for food and life, romance blossoms. “You belong here,” he tells her.
Pure escapism, “You, Me & Tuscany” is a glossy return to the formulaic rom com that offers no surprises, just cheesy, sweet-natured feel-good laughs tinged with romance.
It’s comfort food that doesn’t ask much of the audience. It’s enough to sit back and watch the rom com clichés as they fly to the air.
There are both the standard rom com New York setting and loads of HGTV Tuscan lifestyle porn, a brash best friend, a meet cute, misunderstandings and appealing leads who (A SPOILER BUT ONLY IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A ROM COM BEFORE!) you know will eventually end up together. These movies aren’t about the destination, one glance at the movie poster on the way into the theatre will let you know how the story ends, they are about the journey.
The key element is the cast and here both leads, Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, exude enough warmth and charm to keep things interesting despite the familiarity of the story. They’re the story’s heart and are surrounded by a cast of wacky characters
The beauty of “You, Me & Tuscany” is that it is, loudly and proudly, a slick and frothy, relentlessly upbeat rom com with all that entails. It’s a story of forgiveness, family, and food for fans of the genre. All others needn’t apply.
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 3: 2 STARS. “the franchise is baklava!”
The “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” franchise is baklava in theatres this weekend, bringing with it some familiar faces—Nia Vardalos and John Corbett return as married couple Toula Portokalos and Ian Miller—and a load of Grecian-Americans stereotypes. Question is, on the third outing, is there anything fresh left for the franchise to say or is it a Greek tragedy?
Twenty-one years ago the original “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” told the silly and saccharine story of happy couple Toula and Ian. “There are three things that every Greek woman must do in life,” says Toula in that movie, “marry Greek boys, make Greek babies, and feed everyone.”
That Ian wasn’t Greek was a problem, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome with some slapstick and sweet-natured good humour.
Two movies later, the light tone continues, but the family is mourning the loss of Portokalos patriarch Gus (played by the late Michael Constantine in the first two films), a man so proud of his heritage that he can trace any word back to its origins in Greek… even the word kimono.
In death, he’s still proudly Greek, leaving behind a last wish that his family visit his childhood village and reconnect with their roots. At the family reunion Toula and Ian, with daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) and Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) in tow, explore the village, meet Gus’s old friends and pass along a journal he wrote about his life’s journey.
“This is one reunion we’ll never forget,” says Toula.
They may never forget the reunion, but the film is not memorable. The original movie was sublimely silly with just enough naturalism to keep the story earthbound.
Those days are gone.
If the good old Funk & Wagnalls was illustrated, the definition of the term “broad” could easily be accompanied by the poster for “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.” Everything about Vardalos’s film—she wrote, directed and stars in it—is stretched and overblown. Whether it is the humor, the cloying sentiment or the manipulative undertones of nearly every scene, it is all played so broadly it’s amazing she didn’t have to shoot the whole thing with a wide-angle lens to capture the puffed-up vastness of it all.
It’s a shame because there are some intimate moments that, if played with even a hint of restraint, could have pulled at the heartstrings. Instead, we get souvlaki jokes, banal schmaltziness and choppily edited tourism bureau style footage. Also (SORTA KINDA SPOILER), this may be the first film with the word “Wedding” in the title, to have a wedding, but not show the actual ceremony.
Still, franchise fans may get a kick out of spending some time with familiar characters. Andrea Martin has all the best lines, and the cast performs with enthusiasm. But is enthusiasm enough? Nope, but “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” for better and for worse, much worse, tries harder than any other movie this year to make you love it.
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2: 2 STARS. “no cynicism or originality here.”
It’s hard not to sound cynical and grumpy when reviewing a movie like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.” It is a fourteen-years-in-the-making sequel to one of the biggest grossing romantic comedies of all time, and while it has much of the warmth as the original, it feels warmed over.
Nia Vardalos leads the reunited cast in a story that’s all about mothers and daughters, grandparents and kids, nieces and nephews, brothers, one overbearing aunt and a long lost brother. In other words, it’s all about family.
Vardalos is Toula the bride from the first film, now the overprotective mother to Paris (Elena Kampouris). She’s still married to Ian (John Corbett) and living next door to her parents and brothers. It’s a tight knit group she says is so close it’s occasionally suffocating.
“Close families,” she says, “we make it through things like bad economies because we stick together, but some of us just get stuck.”
Everyone is involved in everyone’s business, so when it comes to light that because of a paperwork error Toula’s parents, Gus (Michael Constantine) and Maria (Lainie Kazan), were never officially married, the entire clan pitches in to throw another big fat Greek wedding.
There’s more, including a subplot about Paris leaving for university, the genealogy of Alexander the Greek and Toula and Ian’s own martial issues. It’s a catch-all for every crowd-pleasing clichés about big families. Let’s teach an old guy how to use a computer! Kids leaving home! Wait, there’s an inappropriate aunt! Battle of the sexes! No stereotype goes unturned in a screenplay (once again penned by Vardalos) that feels as bloated as an overstuffed Yemista.
Under all the clutter, however, are the characters. Vardalos doesn’t blaze any new ground here but she does stay true to the characters that made the first film such a hit. Gus is still a sitcom stereotype who thinks the Greeks invented everything, but Constantine brings him to life despite the weight of the clichés. Ditto Andrea Martin as the randy Aunt Voula and Kazan as the boisterous Maria. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” is a cartoon, an ethnic exaggeration, but the ensemble embraces it.
There’s not an ounce of cynicism here, and I think audiences might respond to the sweet open heartedness of Vardalos and company, but there isn’t a lot of originality here either.
MY LIFE IN RUINS: 1 DORIC COLUMN
Canadian born Nia Vardalos started 2002 as a struggling actress but finished the year with an Oscar nomination. She was the very definition of an overnight sensation. The low budget movie adaptation of her stage show My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the fifth highest grossing movie of the year and became the highest grossing romantic comedy in history. Then came some missteps. A sitcom based on the movie, which one writer dubbed My Big Fat Mistake, was cancelled after just a handful of episodes and an ill conceived (and unfunny) follow-up called Connie and Carla crashed and burned at the box office. And then nothing. For the last four years multi-plexes have been Vardaless zone, but that changes this weekend when her new film, My Life in Ruins, takes her back to where it all began, the Greek Isles.
Vardalos plays Georgia, a neurotic Greek American tour guide who takes groups of, as she says, “obnoxious Americans, miserable married couples and old people” on day trips through Greece. She’s unhappy, unsatisfied and unlikely to improve her love life while trotting through Greece with groups of elderly American day-trippers. That is until she meets Irv Gordon (Richard Dreyfuss) who gives her a lesson in how to have fun and points out that love may be closer than she thinks.
This has been a good year on film for the ancient world. Angels & Demons showed off some of Rome’s most beautiful attractions, and now My Life in Ruins does the same thing for Greece. Good for tourism, maybe not as good for movie goers.
You know there’s trouble when one of the lead character’s names is Poopi Cacas and he has a nephew named Doodi Cacas. I’ll tell you, the character Poopi Cacas isn’t the only thing about this movie that is poopi cacas. A sitcom script that tries in vain to mix comedy with heartwarming doesn’t do anyone any favors, the actors or the audience.
Not once, but twice a character says to Vardalos, “You’re not funny. Stop trying.” If only she had taken that advice. She is likeable, and that gives the movie whatever warmth it has, but her broad comic style is better suited to the stage than the screen. Blown up to feature size her performance is revealed to be made up entirely of rolling eyes and quirky facial expressions. It’s like British pantomime with a Hellenic twist.
No one really survives the film with their dignity intact. Richard Dreyfuss, once the star of classics like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is firmly entrenched in the “old coot” phase of his career, and one has to wonder if things had worked out for Rachel Dratch on 30 Rock if she would ever even have considered reading this script, let alone sign on to play an unfunny stereotype.
It would be easy (and snarky) to say that My Life in Ruins should have been titled My Career in Ruins, but you never know, this could catch on with the same audience that made My Big Fat Greek Wedding a hit, but if you do go, go for the scenery and not the comedy.
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING
This is a charmingly told tale of Toula, a frumpy Greek woman who meets Ian, the man of her dreams. The only problem is, he’s not Greek, a detail that doesn’t go over well with her tightly knit family. Along the way Toula’s family learns to accept Ian; Ian learns to love the lust for life his new extended family possesses and Toula learns about herself. Based on a one-woman play, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is pretty standard stuff, but told with such wit that it is virtually impossible not to get swept along for the ride. Nia Vardalos as Toula anchors the whole film, while a supporting cast of colourful characters swirl around her. Of particular note are Michael Constantine as her father, (a man so proud of his heritage that he can trace any word back to its origins in Greek… even the word kimono!) and Andrea Martin as crazy Aunt Voula, a loveable but overbearing relative who has an opinion about everything. Toronto residents will also enjoy playing “Spot the Locations” as much of the film was shot on The Danforth in the heart of the city’s Greek village.
