'Wedding' draws wide range of fans
By Claudia Puig
USA Today
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| "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has turned into a low-budget blockbuster.
Gannet News Service |
"They loved the movie so much that they got together with all their friends who had married into ethnic families and decided to have a big party to celebrate their ethnicity," says Wilson, who produced the picture, along with her husband, Tom Hanks. "In the Hamptons, can you believe it?"
Almost nothing strains credulity when it comes to the sleeper phenomenon that is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding.," the summer's biggest low-budget hit, based on a stage play by actress Nia Vardalos, who wrote and stars in the movie.
The romantic comedy about a young Greek American woman and her eccentric family has made $23.6 million since opening April 19, making it a veritable blockbuster by indie standards.
"Twenty-three million dollars and the picture doesn't stop going," says Dan Marks, senior vice president, Nielsen EDI. "That's a big hit."
When the film opened at the Art House Cinema on Restaurant Row, it became a food-themed event.
The Olive Tree Cafe in Kahala donated stuffed grape leaves, and members of Sts. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Pacific enjoyed free movie passes and Greek snacks.
The word of mouth is making the movie a stunning success.
It's still playing on two screens at Restaurant Row and also is showing at the Kahala 8.
"It's doing extremely well," said Don Brown, general manager of Restaurant Row. "I think it has resonated here in Hawai'i because of the high number of mixed marriages, even though it's obviously a different culture."
"Wedding," made for a modest $3 million, seems to have struck just the right chord in a summer dominated by special-effects-soaked action sagas.
"It's essentially a classic feel-good movie, and in today's cynical times, perhaps it has more relevance than ever," says Paul Brooks, president of Gold Circle Films, which helped pay for the production. "It doesn't seek to be anything magnificent. It's not saying anything extraordinary or different. It's just talking about life and love in an accessible way, with real heart and real humor. People have responded to that."
It's playing on 499 screens in 40 cities and will likely expand to about 600 screens.
"It has a universal theme," Wilson said. "You could substitute Greek for anything: Italian, Jewish, Hispanic. And being a first-generation American, it was like a love letter to my parents."
The PG-rated film is drawing audiences of her parents' age on down to children.
Vardalos, 39, says what she loves most about the film — which also stars John Corbett, Andrea Martin and Michael Constantine — is how people connect with it.
"A woman came up to me and said, 'This is all about my family.' I asked her, 'Are you Greek?' She said, 'No, I'm Irish,' " says Vardalos. "Everybody is seeing their family up there."
"I took every moment of the last 20 years of my life and I squished it into this screenplay, and I took every wedding I've ever been to and stole from it and I just wrote what I knew," says Vardalos.
The love story closely parallels her romance with her non-Greek husband, actor Ian Gomez: "My husband is American, but got baptized Greek Orthodox for me."
The movie has been such a success that Vardalos has also made a TV sitcom pilot, in the running as a CBS midseason replacement.
Advertiser staff writer Tanya Bricking contributed to this report.
