'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3' is the most unnecessary movie of the year

Following the passing of her father Gus, Tula (Nia Vardalos) sets off to Greece with her husband Ian (John Corbett) and her daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) to find her father's village and give a journal her father kept to his friends. While there, Tula soon discovers the village to be empty and the young mayor is eager to bring both water and people back to it by planning a reunion for its diaspora...

It's hard to overstate just how completely unasked for 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3' is. You have to remember that the first movie at least had some kind of reason for existing. It explored culture clash, overbearing families, and shone a light on Greek-American culture that hadn't really been explored in anything since Telly Savalas and 'Kojak'. Nia Vardalos wrote the script based on her own experiences and that integrity spun an independent film with a small budget into a $368 million worldwide smash hit that made it all the way to the Oscars and saw Vardalos receive a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Twenty-one years later, however, and the Windex definitely isn't working anymore.

The fact that the movie was shot during COVID means that when the family arrives in Greece, they're shown the sights of Athens from a stock footage montage ala 'Wayne's World 2' before they're brought to the secluded village where the most annoying person in Greece - the mayor, played by Melina Kotselou - gives them a rundown of the village's woes and how their presence is going to help. There's a hurried reunion with a long-lost brother, another subplot about the agricultural situation in Greece, and perhaps most tone-deaf of all is a love story between a Syrian refugee and a Greek villager.

All of this adds up to absolutely nothing. There is no core, no centre, no reason for any of it and the thing just perpetuates itself in the most awkward, futzing way. The movie has no kind of imagination to any of it, the jokes are completely flat and lifeless, and the editing looks like it was done with a rusty chainsaw that was about to run out of fuel. The entire time you're watching 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3', the only thing that comes back at you is this one simple question - why?

How necessary was this movie, when you come right down to it? Was there even a need for a sequel to 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', never mind a threequel and a short-lived sitcom? Why bother with something like this, when it looks so pointedly cheap and crap, to say nothing of painfully unfunny and kind of insulting? Was it simply a chance for the cast and crew to work during COVID and get a nice trip to Greece? That's great and all for them, but do the rest of us have to be subjected to the thinnest possible excuse for it? Sure, it looks like they had a nice time and Greece looks beautiful, but does it need to clog up cinemas and waste people's time? Do we even need to continue with this review? Just move along, folks. Move along.