‘Wedding’ a hilarious, must-see comedy

In theaters

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, directed by Joel Zwick, written by Nia Vardalos, 95 minutes. Rated PG.

Joel Zwick’s hilarious comedy, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” begins on a high note and sustains it beautifully.

As the film opens, frumpy, 30-year-old Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) is looking rather glum and desperate as her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), expresses his disappointment with her inability to find a man willing to marry her. “You’re looking old,” Gus says worriedly.

In an inspired flashback, the film jumps to the hell of Toula’s childhood, where we’re struck with the telltale truth of her unconventional appearance as a child. “I was a swarthy 6-year-old with sideburns,” she says – and she’s not kidding.

Fast-forwarding to the present, Toula sums up her current problems with biting, yet understandable cynicism: “Like all Greek women, I was put on Earth to marry Greek boys, make Greek babies and feed everyone until the day I die.”

Well, maybe and maybe not.

The film, from a script Vardalos based on her own experiences and culled from her one-woman show, is about a bright yet sheltered woman who’s been waiting three decades for her life to begin.

For her overbearing Greek family, that means following the same blueprint for wedded success that generations of other Greek women have followed. But for Toula, who has her own ideas about what works best for her, it means finding the courage to leave her family’s restaurant, the Dancing Zorbas, attend college – and find a man on her own terms.

With the help of her mother, Maria (Lainie Kazan), and her Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin), she does just that – and blooms into a beauty in the process.

But there’s a hitch: The man Toula falls in love with and plans to wed isn’t Greek at all. He’s a WASP named Ian Miller (John Corbett), a fact that sends Toula’s family straight into a tailspin – and leaves some of them rushing for the ouzo.

The film, which was released last April and has since gone on to become the sleeper hit of the summer, works because of the care and attention that went into the script and the creation of its characters.

It’s unabashedly formulaic and its laughs come almost entirely from its ethnic exaggerations, but its seams don’t rub against the screen and its jabs at Greek culture and Greek Americans are never cruel, which is key. Instead, the film is affectionate and loving, a spirit that sustains the movie and makes it one of this year’s must-see comedies.

Grade: A-

On video and DVD

THE SWEETEST THING, directed by Roger Kumble, written by Nancy Pimental, 84 minutes. Rated R.

The thing about Roger Kumble’s “The Sweetest Thing,” a raunchy sex comedy about a trio of trollops living the low life loosely in San Francisco, is that it wants to be a cross between “There’s Something About Mary,” “Charlie’s Angles” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

But in spite of featuring Cameron Diaz – the co-star of those films – in the lead, “The Sweetest Thing” is too cynical to be cute, too dirty to be endearing and too dumb to offer anything more than a few isolated laughs.

The film, from a script by “South Park” writer Nancy Pimental, exaggerates the elements that made its predecessors work, particularly the gross-out scenes in “Mary,” which now, after years of copycats determined to outdo each other, seems more the stuff of “Romper Room” than ever.

In the film, Diaz is Christina Walters, who, like her roommates Courtney (Christina Applegate) and Jane (Selma Blair), isn’t seeking Mr. Right as much as she’s seeking Mr. Right Now. But when Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane) steps into Christina’s life, all of that changes as she realizes – on the basis of one cocktail, I might add – that this Realtor could be Mr. Forever.

If “The Sweetest Thing” had taken its inspiration from HBO’s “Sex in the City,” what ensues might have been insightful and fun.

But since Kumble and Pimental believe that the more insanely crude they are, the funnier their movie will be, audiences are instead treated to all of the alleged hilarity of a semen-stained dress, a breast implant fiasco, and a horrific moment of lockjaw and oral piercings gone awry.

Grade: D+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.