Movie Review

??½

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Directed by Kirk Jones. Written by Nia Vardalos. Starring Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Elena Kampouris. At Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs. 94 minutes. PG-13 (some suggestive material)

Didn’t Nia Vardalos’s screen dad, Michael Constantine, tell you? The Greeks invented ice hockey. That’s just one of the ethnic-pride whoppers dropped in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2,’’ which doesn’t try to reinvent the rom-com wheel that made the 2002 original a sleeper hit.

After all this time, it’s more of the same gags, characters, caricatures, and pre-nuptial freneticism from Vardalos, who again wrote the screenplay, and director Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine’’). Some elements are even broader while a couple, welcomely, are emotionally truer to life. If you appreciated the first movie’s sweetness, then you’ll likely be charmed enough. Otherwise, you’ll find the oof-to-opa! ratio hasn’t changed.

We find Toula (Vardalos) making a different sort of self-discovery this time — namely, that her huge, boisterous family’s oppressive clinginess is genetic. Toula and still hunky husband Ian (John Corbett) fret that their restless teenage daughter, Paris (Elena Kampouris), will move far away for college. Their hovering isn’t quite as mortifying as grandpa Gus (Constantine) wondering aloud when Paris plans to settle down with a Greek boy (what else?), but it’s still a bit much. Give cast newbie Kampouris credit for quietly grounding the cartoony proceedings. Her material and goth-lite look might be stereotypically adolescent, but we empathize that she’s annoyed out of her mind.

This is hardly all the drama in Vardalos’s busy, fluffy script. There’s a wedding to get to, of course — but since the movie’s marketing has been coy about giving details, we’ll just stick to the teasers list. Some of the thrill is gone for Toula and Ian, partly because his saintly Philhellenism has cooled, and partly because she’s backsliding into frumpiness. (No problem there — Andrea Martin’s oversexed Aunt Voula has plenty of unsolicited advice.) Gus and Toula’s mom (Lainie Kazan) run into a marital hiccup cribbed from the same dog-eared sitcom playbook used by “I Love Lucy’’ and “The Flintstones.’’ Oh, and contemporary Greeks-of-note John Stamos and producer Rita Wilson drop by with a cute prospect for Paris — and, you know, just ’cuz.

The movie makes fewer idiosyncratic cultural observations than the first one did — the views on family and the American dream, the lamb-on-the-spit holiday rituals, the taste in decor. But it does offer a take on Greek tradition one more generation removed from its initial dip in the melting pot — and the flavor is essentially the same, for better and for worse.

??½ My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Directed by Kirk Jones. Written by Nia Vardalos. Starring Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Elena Kampouris. At Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs. 94 minutes. PG-13 (some suggestive material).

Tom Russo can be reached at trusso2222@gmail.com.