My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) on Netflix
Toula Portokalos, 30, works in her family's restaurant in Chicago, and her father Gus wants her to marry a Greek boy. She meets Ian Miller, a teacher who is not Greek.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.6/10152,315 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Chicago, the Portokalos family is large and Greek, and Toula, at 30, still lives at home and works at the family restaurant, Dancing Zorba's. She wants a life of her own, while her father, Gus, wants her to marry and have children. Toula asks her parents to let her take computer classes at a local college, and her mother, Maria, persuades Gus to agree. Toula changes her image, then takes a class in computers and tourism and goes to work at her aunt Voula's travel agency. Ian Miller, a high school teacher, notices her there and asks her out. They date and fall in love. Her family would disapprove of a non-Greek, so Toula tells them she is taking a pottery class instead.
Cast
- Christina Eleusiniotisas Toula Portokalos - Age 6
- Marita Zouravlioffas Toula Portokalos - Age 12
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Vardalos and Playtone producer Gary Goetzman overheard John Corbett, in town shooting Serendipity, telling a friend at a bar that he had read the script and was upset he could not make the auditions; they approached him and offered him the part of Ian Miller on the spot.
- A suit charged that Gold Circle Films was engaging in so-called "Hollywood accounting", reporting only $287 million in aggregate gross receipts from box office, television rights and video sales, despite the film grossing $370 million in box office alone.
- The one-woman 45-minute monologue workshop that became the film was based on Vardalos's own family in Winnipeg in Canada and on her experience marrying a non-Greek man, the actor Ian Gomez.
- Suggested changes to the project included altering the plot, getting a known actress in the lead role, with Marisa Tomei one name mentioned, and changing the family's ethnicity to Hispanic.
- Several Hollywood executives and celebrities saw the stage show, including the actress Rita Wilson, who herself has Greek heritage, and Wilson convinced her husband, the actor Tom Hanks, to come and see it as well.
- The 2023 film in the series, a joint production of Playtone, Gold Circle Films, HBO Films and Focus Features, was dedicated to the memory of Michael Constantine, who died on August 31, 2021, at the age of 94.
