ScreenWize

Nia Vardalos made her name writing and starring in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was the sleeper hit of 2002. ‘Sleeper hit’ is an industry term meaning ‘nobody thought this would make a dollar but thanks for all your money’. I don’t predict the same kind of business for My Life in Ruins, a sweet but shallow holiday flick purpose-built to showcase Vardalos’ considerable charms. She plays Georgia, a Greek American who ran away to Greece for a new life as a historian but the economic downturn finds her working as a tour guide, where the endless succession of foreign tourists ignorant of the wonders of the Greek mainland and interested only in shopping for cheap souvenirs has gotten to her. On the verge of throwing in the towel and heading home, she agrees to one last tour.

Numbering among her charges are characters anyone who has ever been on holiday anywhere will recognise - the obnoxious American tourists (Rachel Drach and Harland Williams), the bickering couple (Caroline Goodall and Ian Ogilvy), the kleptomaniac grandma (Sheila Bernette), the beer-swilling Aussies (Simon Gleeson and Natalie O’Donnell) and the funny guy (Richard Dreyfuss).The words ‘Starring Richard Dreyfuss’ are a deal-breaker in my books, and it took a good 30 minutes after seeing them to unclench and enjoy My Life in Ruins.

The screenplay by Mike Reiss (responsible for some of the better Simpsons episodes, so he ought to know better) is a weak collection of under-written stereotypes. The Aussie couple, for example, speak a strine so thick with colloquialisms even a Coober Pedy opal miner might have trouble understanding them. They crack their first Fosters at breakfast, and Reiss’s idea of character development is when they switch to Heineken by the end of the film. That is, however, looking at the film through the jaded eyes of a film critic. Sure it is a bad film, but it is also full of laughs and the occasional genuine moment, and you can just drink in the warmly-shot images from its glorious Greek locations.

Not every film can have hormone driven Quidditch playing teens fighting alien car-transforming robots from the future, and My Life in Ruins makes a nice antidote for filmgoers seeking respite from the wiz-bangery of the American summer blockbusters choking our screens. The industry term for this is counter-programming, and you could do worse.

CK
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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon