April 19th, 2002
 
Cast
Toula Portokalos: Nia Vardalos
Ian Miller: John Corbett
Maria: Lainie Kazan
Gus: Michael Constantine
Nikki: Gia Carides
Nick: Louis Mandylor
Angelo: Joey Fatone
Rodney Miller: Bruce Gray
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Joel Zwick. Written by Nia Vardalos. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG.(for sensuality and language).

Central Theme
Family and ethnic heritage can always assimilate diversity if mutual love and respect are involved.

Story
Toula is thirty-years old and still hasn’t fulfilled her Greek family’s expectations that she marry a nice Greek boy and bear children. She dreams of more, but feels constrained by family tradition and a father’s smothering love. She makes her move by attending school and escaping the family restaurant for a travel agency. Then she meets Ian and is swept off her feet by a man who is everything she could hope for, except he is not Greek. When her large, close-knit very Greek family finds out about the relationship there is trauma, but Ian is willing to do whatever it takes—even converting to Greek Orthodoxy, being baptized and meeting the whole, very strange family. Merging her expansive, effusive family and his uptight lawyerly, Chicago Northshore country-club family prove challenging, but their love and devotion is equal to the task.

This film celebrates family, tradition and the binding force of religion. The infusion of genuine love bathes this film in a humorous and rare warmth that has an almost healing effect on the audience. There are many wonderful values in this film, but Ian’s proposal to Toula while together in bed was a sad intrusion of today’s new morality in a film generally respectful of traditional values.

This gem made it to the big screen because Rita Wilson, herself a Greek-American, saw it on stage in Chicago and convinced husband Tom Hanks that they should produce it.

Beliefs

1. Maintaining ethnic traditions provides continuity and strength to a family.
   
2. Ethnic traditions can also perpetuate the weaknesses of that culture.
   
3. True love can absorb the differences between cultures.
   
4. Love means making compromises.
   
5. When you marry, you marry the in-laws and extended family.
   
6. Family approval is essential for a truly happy marriage.
   

Questions Worth Discussing

1. When you marry, do you marry the in-laws and extended family?
   
2. Should a man ask a father for permission to marry his daughter, even if she is thirty?
   
3. Is it worth it to preserve ethnic traditions in the new world?
   

Provocative Quotes

• You better get married really soon. You’re looking really old.
  
  Dad to Toula.


• Nice Greek girls do three things. Marry Greek boys. Make Greek babies. Feed everybody until the day we die.
  
  Toulas.


• If Nikki has one goat and Maria has nine—how soon will they marry?
  
  Toula.


• When I was your age, we didn’t have food.
  
  Mom to Toula.


• A couple of years later my dad brought his mother over from Greece to live with us—because we weren’t weird enough.
  
  Toula.


• The man is the head but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head any way she wants.
  
  Mom.


• She’s smart enough for a girl.
  
  Dad when Toula wants to go to school.


• I don’t remember a frumpy girl, but I remember you.
  
  Ian to Toula.


• Our purpose is to breed more loud breeding Greek eaters.
  
  Toula explaining Greeks to Ian.


• Is he a nice boy? Is he from a good family? I don’t know. Nobody comes to talk to me anymore. A respectful boy would have come to ask for my permission to marry Toula.
  
  Dad to Mom about the engagement.


• When I am with you I am so happy, but my family is so unhappy. It can’t be like this.
  
  Toula to Ian.


• Your lucky day. To be baptized in a Greek Orthodox church.
  
  Dad to Ian.


• When my people were writing philosophy, your people were still swinging from trees.
  
  Dad to himself about Ian.


• You don’t eat meat? That’s O.K. I’ll make Lamb!
  
  Aunt to Ian.


• I gave you life so you could live it.
  
  Mom to Toula.


• Miller is from the Greek root for ‘apple.’ Our name means orange. That mean tonight we have an apple and orange. We’re all different. But in the end. We all fruit.
  
  Dad toast at reception.


• Oh my God, They bought us a house.
  
  Toula to Ian at reception.
  

© 2001 - 2010 Dick Staub, CRS Communications.