Reception and Performance
My Big Fat Greek Wedding became a sleeper hit and grew steadily from its limited release. Despite never hitting the number one spot and being an independent film with a $5 million budget, it ultimately grossed over $368.7 million worldwide, becoming one of the top romantic films of the 21st Century according to Echo Bridge Entertainment. It was the fifth highest-grossing film of 2002 in the United States, with USD$241,438,208, and the highest-grossing romantic comedy in history. Domestically, it is also the highest-grossing film never having been number one on the weekly North American box office charts. The film is among the most profitable of all time, with a 6150% return on an (inflation adjusted) cost of $6 million to produce.
Despite being hugely successful for an independent film, according to the studio, the film lost money. Accordingly, the cast (with the exception of Nia Vardalos who had a separate deal) sued the studio for their part of the profits. The original producers of the film have sued Gold Circle Films due to Hollywood accounting practices because the studio has claimed the film lost $20 million.
The movie received generally positive reviews. Martin Grove of Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson found Wedding when it was a one-woman Nia Vardalos play in L.A. and believed in it so much that they got it made as a movie".
Based on 121 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 75%, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critical consensus was, "Though it sometimes feels like a television sitcom, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is good-hearted and lovable." By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 62, based on 29 reviews, which is considered to be "Generally favorable reviews".
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Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or performance:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)