Review: 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3' falls flat but hits an emotional note

Haven't we seen all this before? Of course we have, in the first two movie love letters that Nia Vardalos created in honor of her family. Now in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," only in theaters, Vardalos is still laughing, crying and fussing about her boisterous Greek relatives.

Before digging into the problems plaguing this third family celebration from Vardalos, now the director as well as writer and star of her franchise, let's play a little catchup.

The first movie in 2002 was a big fat Greek hit, taking in $368 million against a $5 million budget to become the highest-grossing romcom of all time. Not bad for a movie that Vardalos based on her little-seen one-woman show about defying her parents and marrying a non-Greek Adonis.

Rita Wilson, also Greek, saw the show and with her husband, Tom Hanks, produced the film version with Vardalos in the lead. Nice story, huh, with Vardalos starring as drab Toula Portokalos, stuck working at Dancing Zorba's, the Chicago restaurant owned by her parents Gus (Michael Constantine) and Maria (Lainie Kazan).

After a makeover, Toula falls for and marries waspy school teacher Ian Miller (John Corbett, Aidan on "Sex and the City" and "And Just Like That..."). Cue the happy ending and an Oscar nomination for Vardalos for best original screenplay. Opa!.

It took 14 years to cobble together a 2016 sequel that couldn't match the charm that snuck up on us back then. What once bubbled up from a sincere love of Greek family ties had congealed into the all-too-familiar Hollywood tale of milking a cash cow until it cries for mercy.

Now, seven years later, we get "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," in which the whole Portokalos clan gathers in Athens to memorialize a death in the family. It's the passing of daddy Gus, whose final wish was that everyone visit his Greek birthplace, reconnect with his old friends by showing them his journals and discover their family roots.

In a sad coincidence, Michael Constantine, who played Gus, died in 2021 a year after the passing of Vardalos's own father on whom she had based the character.

That makes "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" the most personal film yet for Vardalos, who commendably allows grief to play a major part, even in the comic doings of her immigrant characters that recycle every joke in the crazy family playbook.

For romance, the focus shifts to Tula and Ian's daughter Paris (a terrific Elena Kamporis), who may or may not have a wedding in her near future. Could the groom be Aristotle (Elias Kacavas), the date she "ghosted," according to busybody Aunt Voula? Returning as Voula, Andrea Martin remains the best friend a comic line ever had, even one that's aged way past its sell-by date.

The rest of the cast keep pushing the same brand of ethnic humor. And I mean, really pushing, another reason this followup falls so painfully flat. Audience good will -- that's the secret sauce for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," even as its game cast and gorgeous locations in Athens and Corfu can't disguise that it's repurposing what came before with diminishing returns.