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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, October 14, 2002

ABOUT MEN
It's the meatiest roles that make for memorable movies

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By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Columnist

I finally broke down. Hard as I tried, I just couldn't resist the pop entertainment vortex that is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

You know that darling of an independent movie? The $5 million sleeper with the Andersen Accounting box-office returns?

I put off seeing it as long as I could because it looked too much like indie-lite, like a Garry Marshall-ized wacky-ethnic-family-foodie thing.

Well, as usual, I'm an idiot. Man, what a film! It might have been the best I've seen all year. Yeah, the characters were flat as sliced cheese and the film itself had as much thematic weight as a really good Archie comic. But, for me, the whole thing turned on one brief, sublime moment midway through.

You remember, don't you? It's the part where the "Northern Exposure" guy takes his ultra-WASP parents to meet the wacky ethnic Portokolos family. There, like a carnivore goddess rising above all that predictable but cleverly scripted cultural turmoil, is Andrea Martin walking around the house offering people huge slabs of meat.

Personally, I think Martin reached her artistic peak doing Indira Gandhi on "SCTV," but her performance here is inspiring. She's walking around the house with a big plate of meat!

Geez, I get choked up just remembering.

Scenes like this are what good filmmaking is all about, these transcendent moments when an audience is allowed to glimpse the possibility of a better world — a world where huge slabs of meat are offered generously and without condition. Can we get a group hug here?

For years, women have denigrated the tastes of male moviegoers by suggesting that it takes nothing more than big explosions and heaving breasts to draw us in. But there are those of us with more refined sensibilities, and for us, a film like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" strikes a emotional chord in our plaque-clogged arteries.

"Wedding" has chick-flick lessons — Mom is the real brains of the family; ideal men are hunky poetic types with shy smiles and shoulder-length hair — but it has more than enough cooked animal flesh to rank it among the best of guy movies. (As Kurt Cobain sang in "Mr. Moustache": "Yes I eat cow, I am not proud.")

Which got me thinking about what other critically lauded movies are also great gastronomic guy flicks.

"The Godfather" is supposed to be the quintessential guy movie — DeNiro, Pacino and Duval! — but it doesn't make our list. How could Michael Corleone gun down that guy in the middle of dinner? What a waste of manicotti.

"Like Water For Chocolate" had potential, but there was way too much white meat and dessert, and dessert — by God — is not food. (Don't talk to me about "Chocolat.")

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" had some good-looking eats, but the roasted dead guy was a little unappetizing and that castrato kid got on my nerves.

"Big Night" is far better by our standards because, 1) it had Isabella Rosselini; and 2) a full complement of meats were represented. Plus the closing scene is masterful: no dialogue, just two brothers quelling hostilities over eggs and bread.

The rest of the short list would probably include: "Tampopo" (a movie that actually convinced me I needed to eat sweet potatoes from the belly of a pig), "Midnight Run" (had to go to the snack bar after Charles Grodin did his bit about huevos rancheros), and "Eat Drink Man Woman" (50 percent more meat than the remake, "Tortilla Soup").

"Silence of the Lambs?" Pass.