My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

The belated sequel is not new. The Two Jakes followed up Chinatown sixteen years later, Godfather Part III kept fans waiting fifteen years, Psycho II was twenty-three years in the making, and Color of Money caught up on Fast Eddie Felson twenty five years after The Hustler.

It’s just lately it feels like a new phenomenon because, well, we’ve been inundated: Jurassic World, Dumb and Dumber To, Tron: Legacy, Men In Black 3, West Is West, The Force Awakens, Toy Story 3, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Clerks 2, Rambo, Crystal Skull, Rocky Balboa/Creed, Basic Instinct 2, American Reunion, X-Files: I Want To Believe, Scream 4, Terminator Genysis, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Before Midnight, Zoolander 2, and Mad Max: Fury Road among them.

But still My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, fourteen years after the original was a surprise hit, raises an eyebrow. Apart from cashing in and revitalising careers there’s no real reason for it to exist.

Nia Vardalos returns as the put-upon Toula who has settled into a comfortable life with hubby Ian (Corbett). But her family are still a disaster. Dad Gus (Constantine) discovers he and Maria (Lainie Kazan) were never properly married (the marriage cert wasn’t signed by the priest or something) and so he, out of pride, wants to get married proper. Maria is on board… but only if Gus proposes as he didn’t do it right last time. Gus refuses.

A slim premise to hang a movie on but despite this being the obese ceremony of the title, it’s only one subplot in a series of subplots: Gus wants Toula’s seventeen-year-old goth daughter Paris (Kampouris) to find a nice boy; Paris is undecided if she’ll stay in Chicago or go to college in New York; Toula and Ian struggle to find time to rediscover their lust; Gus traces his ancestry back to Alexander The Great; Paris looks for a date to the prom; and, in a later development, Gus and brother-from-the-old-country don’t see eye to eye.

The script relies on broad sit-com humour and standalone scenarios of mini catastrophes, which are easily fixed before moving on to the next one. There’s no rhythm as it bounces from one scene to the next like a musical without songs. Director Kirk Jones (Everybody’s Fine, What To Expect When You’re Expecting) doesn’t try to infuse these random subplots into an overarching story and just slaps everything on with a trowel, making no attempt to disguise the payoffs of obvious jokes (one ‘gag’ sees a Greek family delight Gus in agreeing to introduce their son to Paris… but the son turns out to be seven). The soundtrack too is rom-com 101: mandolin and bouncy accordion for the upbeat scenes, plinky plonk piano and strings for the romantic ones.

With more belated sequels in the pipe, here’s hoping that Everybody Wants Some (the follow up to Dazed and Confused) offers something more than a cobbled together rehash.