Morley Walker pens an apologetic ode to Winnipeg-raised actress Nia Vardalos in today’s Freep.
Nia’s latest movie, My Life In Ruins, opened in 9th spot this weekend, earning just $3.2 million. Morley offers a number of excuses (many from Vardalos herself) why the movie didn’t open strong, including the small number of screens it’s playing on, the small size of the film’s distributor, the small size of the marketing budget, and that “movies that open strongly are almost always special-effects-driven action films and vulgar comedies.”
I’ve got a better explanation. Maybe, the movie just plain sucks.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, it’s only getting 13% positive reviews. Compare that to the weekend’s box office winner, “male gross-out comedy” The Hangover, which is getting 77%, or to Nia’s own breakout hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which got 76% thumbs up back in 2002.
Look, I think it’s great that Vardalos had success with Greek Wedding. But she hasn’t done anything of note in the past seven years, is hardly a household name outside of Winnipeg, and (based on the reviews) she should be happy this turkey didn’t just go straight to DVD.
As noted by Morley’s Freep colleague Bart Kives in a recent column, “In small communities, there is a tendency to praise all hometown creations in fear of upsetting artistic applecarts.” Well, pardon my boot to the cart, but we shouldn’t be making excuses for Nia’s poor film selection just because she’s local.
I also find it a bit funny that the same factors Vardalos and Walker are complaining about today are what helped make Greek Wedding such a great success story. It was a small movie with an unknown star, a tiny distributor and a micro-sized marketing budget. It opened in even less theatres than My Life in Ruins; about half as many. Yet despite those challenges — or maybe because of them — it became the feel-good hit of 2002.
In a blog entry at the Huffington Post, Vardalos bemoans the current lack of good female-led movies, and asks “So, women: can we speak up with our wallets?”
Maybe they already are Nia.
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Just to blow a few more holes on Morley’s theory, I’ll point out that the ’small’ distributor of My Life In Ruins is Fox Searchlight, which is responsible for other tiny little films like Juno, Slumdog Millionaire and Sideways. Clearly they know how to sell a movie if they’ve got something decent to work with.
And despite the alleged non-existent marketing budget for this film, I’ve seen at least a dozen commercials for it already. Then again, maybe they’re hitting Winnipeg a little harder.
Finally, as for the public’s appetite for “special-effects-driven action films and vulgar comedies”, a quick look at the last 10 weekend box office champs shows that only four of them (The Hangover, Star Trek, Wolverine, Fast and Furious) would meet that description. Four were kid/family-friendly (Hannah Montana, 17 Again, Night At The Museum II, Up), while two were dramas (Obsessed, Angels & Demons).
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Walker’s column advises readers to “Google her (Vardalos) Huffington Post blog from Monday evening.” That works fine in print, but why can’t the online version of the story simply link to the Huff Post? This kind of thing drives me nuts, and both local papers are gulity of it. If you’re talking about a website, link to the damn thing online.
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UPDATE: Just came across these gems in Roger Ebert’s review of the film:
The central question posed by “My Life in Ruins” is, what happened to the Nia Vardalos who wrote and starred in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? She was lovable, earthy, sassy, plumper, more of a mess, and the movie grossed more than $300 million. Here she’s thinner, blonder, better dressed, looks younger and knows it. She’s like the winner of a beauty makeover at a Hollywood studio. She has that don’t touch my makeup! look. And if anyone in Hollywood has whiter, straighter, more gleaming teeth, we’ll never know it, because like most people, they’ll usually keep their lips closed.
To speculate on people’s motives is risky and can be unfair. Let me gently suggest that when Nia Vardalos made “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” she was an unlikely, saucy movie star who didn’t take herself seriously. She was also an incomparably better screenwriter than Mike Reiss, the autopilot sitcom veteran who cobbled together this lousy script.
Now she is rich, famous and perhaps taking herself seriously after being worked over for one too many magazine covers.