My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is the third in a trilogy capper (?) that just goes to show that this would have been far better if they just stuck with the first.

What I found appealing with wanting to watch this film is how after all this time, everyone behind these movies still wanted to make a third one. To me, it seemed important. So, I rewatched the first and enjoyed it a lot more time than what I remember when I was a kid. Then, I watched the sequel for the first time and didn’t care much for it, so going into this, I figured it could go either way. What also interested me in watching this is seeing that lead actress, Nia Vardalos, wrote & directed this. That seemed a bit more promising as she has been with this for so long and the actors in front of the camera clearly felt comfortable with each other, even if the sequel wasn’t as good as the first. To me, the relationships between the characters were the most appealing part of the movies. In the end, I was completely wrong about my expectations with this one.

The biggest, glaring problem with this entry is the fact that it seemed like they wanted to bring the story to Greece, and that’s it. They just ended up making up plots after that. There is no clear plot at all. It’s a strong of multiple plots thrown together in order to keep the movie moving. It ends up in the structure being all over the place, and thus making it far more confusing than it should be. Characters lack motivation and emotions change within a millisecond. I found myself continuously questioning nearly every single aspect through the film.

The film starts off with what looks like a commercial for its opening credits. It doesn’t seem all that bad at first, but it ends up coming off misconstrued for what comes next. Characters are introduced left and right and either serve no purpose, act in unrealistic ways, or serve as the basis of the humor without any of the humor. Due to this, the film ends up jumping back and forth between plots without any real structure. At one point, the main couple agree to go see a monk. The next, the wife shows up at a random place just to fulfill a punch line, while the husband ends up meeting with the monk alone. The husband also just manages to retrieve something from the monk that the wife needs, which is just a list of people and where they live now. Why would a monk have this? Why didn’t just the family try to investigate online? It’s that bad.

There is also the plot with two different couples. The last time we saw the main couple’s daughter, it seemed like the film was setting itself up for her to be married in the next sequel. Instead, the film focuses on a completely separate & random couple that has no emotion tie to the series. Mentioning of this couple, it spawns yet another plot line where the main character finds out that she has a significant tie to another new character. This involves this character literally spying on the main character for no reason and the main character having certain feelings towards them. It’s the most random thing to occur for a film that I have seen in recent time.

I am noticing that all of the problems with the film involve all of the different plot points. The last one that’s worth mentioning is the character development of the main character’s daughter. She ends up making life choices literally for no reason, which involves in the other characters acting in severely odd ways. One moment, they are cool with how she is behaving, then mad when they find out the truth, and then happy again because of something else probably within a span of five minutes. I hate to give the movie away, but this isn’t even all of the problems that stood out to me. These are just the examples of what makes this film stand out as simply a bad film.

Going back to the beginning of this review where I placed a question mark. I placed that there, because it is extremely unclear where they are going with this movie, and whether or not there are plans for a another one after this. There are still too many things that are left unclear that it seems like they are intending to milk this into a series of countless sequels. Considering the second entry made almost $300 million less than the first, this entry should have served as a better conclusion.

The film is not all bad though. There are a few genuine chuckles here and there and the cinematography isn’t that bad considering how often sound stages are used. There are even some nice moments of growth between the characters a bit towards the end. What would have made the film far better is not having the structures problems it had, as well as have a better focus with the story. The couple that ends up getting married is so random compared to the actual couple that could have gotten married and serve this as a proper conclusion.

Overall, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 does neither nothing new or make it a relevant entry that’s worth watching. The randomness of it all just shows that this should have been an only one and done entry with the one that came out 20 years ago. I can see the appeal in expanding off from the first one. Unfortunately, this series has just gone in the completely wrong direction to make it a trilogy that’s worthwhile.

VERDICT: 1.5/5 (Pretty Bad)