FETA-CCOMPLI

Now in theaters:

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3--This chapter of the jovial family comedy has the distinction of being the first to contain an actual Greek wedding. That is, it has a wedding that happens in Greece, not just among Greek-Americans in Chicago.

Toula (Nia Vardalos) and her WASPy husband Ian (John Corbett), hitched in the original 21 years ago, here lead their rowdy clan on a trip back to the old country. They've been invited to a reunion in the tiny hometown of Toula's beloved late father Gus (Michael Constantine), up a series of switchbacks on a mountainside overlooking the sea.

There they meet variously dour and/or wacky relatives and locals in the gloriously beautiful but depressed and underpopulated village. Much food and booze is consumed, and family secrets are revealed. Among these is the love between a handsome young cousin and the radiant Syrian immigrant he wants to marry.

None of these conflicts feel terribly stressful. Written and directed by Vardalos, Big Fat Greek 3 moves forward in long montages of travelogue footage interrupted at times by short, disjointed bursts of dialogue. It's not suspenseful and it's only occasionally funny, but I enjoyed it anyway; it's about familial and generational issues that connect with most of us, especially as we get older. And it's a relaxing hour and a half vicarious vacation in scenery that looks (onscreen) like paradise, in the company of an agreeable cast, and driven along by a soundtrack full of irresistable Greek songs.

Along with Vardalos and the good sport Corbett, the returning players include Louis Mandylor, Joey Fatone, Gia Carides, Maria Vacratsis and, very briefly, Lainie Kazan, all sweetly and amusingly disappated since the first film, along with the apparently indestructible Andrea Martin as the unshakeably self-impressed Aunt Voula. Elena Kampouris returns from Big Fat Greek 2 as Paris, Toula and Ian's unfathomably college-age daughter.

The wild card character is Victory, the town's ebullient self-proclaimed mayor and booster, puckishly played by the Greek theater actress Maria Kotselou. She's quite a find.