MY LIFE IN RUINS (Donald Petrie). 98 minutes. Opens Friday (June 5). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
I get that rom-coms aren’t supposed to be too challenging, but for the love of the gods, gimme a nanosecond of tension.
My Life In Ruins wants none of it, assuming we’ll go along for the ride through Greece with tour guide Georgia (Nia Vardalos) and her ragtag band of tourists without craving some small thing to sink our teeth into.
Vardalos plays the unlucky-in-love American expat who always gets the loser tourist group, this one including wise widower Richard Dreyfuss Harland Williams as the guy not sure he wants kids with wife Rachel Dratch a bickering Brit couple with a sulky daughter two Spanish divorcees looking for some Greek action – you get the picture.
Vardalos is fun to watch while she copes with an obnoxiously competitive colleague (Alistair McGowan) and tries to figure out what to do with her brooding but very cute bus driver (Alexis Georgoulis). But the whole thing is thinner than the air on Mount Olympus. An obnoxious homophobic interlude in which one of the travellers wears the wrong T-shirt doesn’t help.
But omigod, Greece is gorgeous. The gods are crying out for a movie worthy of the scenery.
