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Discouraged by her lack of direction in life, she works as a travel
guide, leading a rag-tag group of tourists as she tries to show them
the beauty of her native Greece while waiting to land her dream job.
Opening their eyes to an exotic foreign land, she, too, begins to see
things in new ways - finding her "kefi" and possibly love in the process.
Clearly heading back to the well after the failure of her projects post My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which included the TV series My Big Fat Greek Life and Connie and Carla) My Life In Ruins is a cinematic disaster on countless levels.
Despite a cheesy but workable script, and the backing of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson (who made a mint from producing Greek Wedding), My Life In Ruins suffers, more than anything, from "Direct To VHS" syndrome. In fact, it's amazing it's taken this long to finally hit DVD.
Plain and simple, My Life In Ruins looks cheap. Very, very cheap.
No
matter how good a script (which this isn't), or how impressive a cast
(which this has... I'm thinking Richard Dreyfuss owed Rita Wilson a BIG
favour, plus it's always great to see UK's Alistair McGowan and SNL's Rachel Dratch onscreen) - comedies just don't work unless they look one of two ways :
Super Slick (EG: The Hangover) or Super Gritty (EG: Police Academy).
What is served up with Ruins feels like a well shot Australian TV series - or, at best, one of those pesky cable American Pie sequels. And for those who have no sense of taste... that isn't a good thing.
There are times where the film does find it's feet (a kleptomaniac grandmother is one of the few highlights), but all My Life In Ruins'
good work is quickly undone by forced "comedy", unnatural
sentimentality and the type of "wacky" electronic-keyboard heavy
musical score that was so common in the latter installments of the Revenge Of The Nerds franchise.
Admittedly, Nia Vardalos does ground the film and (depending on what
angle she is shot from... ) she is impressively easy on the eye
considering her age. But it just isn't enough to warrant someone
wasting their time and money on heading out to a video store, trawling through the shelves and renting it.
Mums
and Grandparents may be able to look past it's flaws and chuckle, but
one would hope we have progressed somewhat as a society that most will
have the good sense to avoid it.
"Oh, I get it, she's Greek and
said something about a souvalaki... brilliant! Like a female Nick
Gianopolous I tells ya! Bring on the sequel..."
DVD Special Features
Quite a bit on offer here, which is very strange
considering both the fact that the budget for the flick was so small
(just over $15M) and the returns were even smaller ($8.6M in the USA).
Includied
are an Audio Commentary by Nia Vardalos, an Audio Commentary by
Director Donald Petrie, another Audio Commentary by writer Mike Reiss,
as well as Deleted and Extended scenes and a Featurette titled
"Everybody Loves Poupi".
You could do worse... but you could also do better.
Conclusion:
Movie 20% Extras: 65%
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