MY LIFE IN RUINS

Nia Vardalos is an incredibly likable actress, who scored a colossal hit with 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding but who’s struggled to find a decent film (or TV series) for herself in the seven years since. Unfortunately for her, this labored, unfunny romantic comedy is another dud in her ever-growing list of sub-par projects. In fact, about five minutes into it I thought, “She should have said 'no' when this was offered to her...”

Vardalos tries to squeeze more blood from the already-tapped “quirky Greek gal” stone as Georgia, an American living in Greece and working as a guide for a tour company she hates. She’s single and personally and professionally unhappy. Driving that point home with all the subtlety of a Vegas marquée are the repeated mentions of her having lost her “kefi.” Kefi kefi kefi kefi. I lost count of how often that word is uttered, but I got the point after about the third mention. Inexplicably, her boss doesn’t seem to like her, her guiding rival – a slick lothario named Nico (Alastair McGowan) – also wants her out so he can absorb her salary, and Georgia appears to be stuck in a bit of a life rut. 

When she suddenly finds herself saddled with a creepy-looking tour driver named Poupi (Alexis Georgoulis), the world’s most decrepit-and-only-in-the-movies bus, and a tour group filled with clichéd, created-by-an-unimaginative-screenwriter misfits, hilarity is meant to ensue. It doesn’t. Richard Dreyfuss co-stars as Irv, an obnoxious group member with a Heart of Gold, who becomes Georgia’s antagonist-turned-counselor, but the entire trajectory of the story can be telegraphed almost from the outset. Is there anyone reading along who can’t already tell how everything will end up?

Written without any originality or spark, the film plods along using tired old jokes, unfunny set-ups (hahahaha! Georgia rants about Poupi and doesn’t know he’s standing right behind her! I have NEVER seen that in a movie before!) and a premise that never feels remotely realistic. If Georgia – who’s smart, funny and gorgeous –  is so fed-up with her job, why hasn’t she quit? If her boss hates her so much, why hasn’t she been fired? The “conflicts” all feel completely manufactured and so very easily solvable, and having the film’s heroine fail to take any of the obvious (and simple) steps to solve them doesn’t make her endearing, it makes her seem foolish. And I’m not sure that’s what the filmmakers intended.

For her part, Vardalos tries her best to sell the material, but it all feels so forced, as though she were trying to push out the funny with every fibre of her being. Dreyfuss is like a caricature – as are the very broadly drawn tour-group members (the lascivious divorcées! the boorish Americans!) – and isn’t quite old enough or cuddly enough to truly pull off his grandfatherly character. Only Georgoulis manages to be interesting and engaging, despite the fact that he has to spend the first portion of the film wearing the world’s most unnecessary, fake-looking mountain-man beard.

Disappointing on a number of levels, My Life in Ruins never made me laugh and, though it did make me tear up (in a highly manipulative, button-pushing way), I left the theater feeling bad for its star. When the running joke in a  script is the name Poupi Kakas (pronounced, of course, “poopy cacas”), maybe let that bus pass you by and get on the next one instead.