reprint or license Print E-Mail

tool name close tool goes here

'My Life in Ruins': my big flat Greek comedy

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

The adorable Nia Vardalos makes an obvious choice for a movie she hopes will recapture a bit of her Big Fat Greek Wedding mojo from 2002.

"Obvious" is the perfect word for My Life in Ruins. Vardalos didn't write it, but it is tailor-made for her. This wan romantic comedy built around a lovelorn tour guide, the annoying people she works for and the annoying tourists she takes around Greece plays like a laugh-starved companion piece to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. From the title to Vardalos' lovelorn narration, this tale of a laid-off American classics professor making her living leading tours through the ruins and glories of Greece is Big Fat Greek II.

The laughs are obvious, too, such as the tourist "types."

"There's the tipsy Australians, the obnoxious Americans, the given-up-on-men-but-still-looking" divorcees and "the funny guy."

Richard Dreyfuss is the obvious choice for the funny guy, obviously named "Irv."

Georgia the tour guide suffers them all, hoping against hope that her lectures will get through to these short-attention-span nitwits and that they learn something about Olympia, the Parthenon and Delphi. But no, they'd rather shop and hunt for ice cream.

Georgia's problem, all the native Greeks in her office tell her, is that she has no kefi, no passion, no joy of life. That's why the boss wants to can her and the kiss-up tour guide Nico (Alistair McGowan) is trying to get her fired. Her tourists don't like her tours.

If only Georgia could be more like Zorba the Greek, a movie that turns up on many a Greek TV at stops along the way. She could dance away her frustration about this country where nothing works but nobody sweats it.

Vardalos is a winning presence, and if you have to hire an old guy to pass on the gift of humor and lessons about love, you could do worse than Dreyfuss. Director Donald Petrie (Grumpy Old Men) finds the odd sweet moment and obvious laugh as well as anybody.

There just aren't many here. The bit players are dull — has Harland Williams, as a goofy contractor-tourist, ever been funny? The gags are played out.

Vardalos will never go broke playing it Greek and playing it safe for her fans. But that's no way for an actress to find her kefi.