A comedy about a young Greek woman (Nia Vardalos) who makes the mistake of falling in love with a man who isn't Greek (John Corbett), Wedding's $3 million box office take last weekend may not seem like much until you consider that it was made for just $5 million. Since its initial limited release in New York and L.A. 16 weeks ago, Wedding has earned more than $40 million.
To put this into perspective, consider the numbers for K-19: The Widowmaker, which cost a reported $80 million with $25 million alone going to star Harrison Ford. The submarine action-drama has made just $30 million in three weeks, and last weekend it grossed less than Wedding ($2.8 million), despite playing on almost 2,000 more screens (2,634 to 657). Wedding averaged $4,570 per location, more than four times K-19's total of $1,084.
"Clearly, word of mouth is spreading and helping the picture find its audience," explained The Hollywood Reporter in a June 28 article (click here to find the link) about the production and distribution of Wedding and its surprising financial success. At the time, the little arthouse-sleeper-that-could had made $16 million in 10 weeks and had actually seen its previous weekend receipts go up 1 percent even though it was being shown on the same number of screens as the weekend before.
Everybody likes to discover some little movie they think nobody else has heard of, and Wedding, based on Vardalos' autobiographical one-woman play, has clearly connected with audiences. Further proof of its strong word of mouth among moviegoers is the fact that the critical reaction, while favorable, has not exactly been glowing. A number of reviewers give Wedding a positive review, but feel the need to qualify their comments. "It uses an old-time formula, it's not terribly original and it's rather messy -- but you just have to love the big, dumb, happy movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding," writes Jeffrey M. Anderson of the San Francisco Examiner. "An amiable, offhanded comedy about ethnic identity and last-chance romance," admits Dave Kehr of the New York Times.
More intriguing is how critics disagree over the way Vardalos represents the ethnic identities characterized in the movie. Leslie Camhi of the Village Voice says, "Vardalos's parodies of Greek family values are loving and witheringly hilarious." Roger Ebert calls it "Warm-hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people inside out." And Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer writes, "As a witness to several Greek-American weddings -- but, happily, a victim of none -- I can testify to the comparative accuracy of Ms. Vardalos' memories and insights."
Among the dissenters: Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman explains, "The wedding ... turns the very concept of 'Greek' into the sort of hideous, pandering clichés that look rejected from bad Jewish and Italian sitcoms." John Hartl of the Seattle Times chides, "Vardalos apparently never met an ethnic stereotype she didn't like, and she's got a million of them." And Charles Taylor of Salon hates almost everything about Wedding (big surprise!):
"The movie is like going to a family reunion and finding a smoochy horde descending on you, all wearing T-shirts saying 'It's a Mediterranean Thing'...And I've no doubt that there are cross-cultural irritations in large families. The trouble here is that none of the characters have a spark of individual life. They're all just fulfilling their generic functions."
Judging from its impressive earnings so far, most moviegoers don't agree with Taylor's cantankerous (though humorous) dismissal. I plan to see it this weekend and will have my response posted sometime next week.
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