This week on Deeply Inconsequential Theatre is My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the continuing ethnic-comedy saga of a Greek-American woman and her family of wacky buttinskies. Anchored by writer/star Nia Vardalos, the first MBFGW, from 2002, was a wildly successful – read: profitable, to the tune of a few hundred million dollars – independent movie that played in theaters for a year, something that almost certainly won’t happen again. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, from 2016, repeated a lot of the same jokes and made us hope that it wouldn’t happen again. And then the third one arrived, directed by Vardalos, and, yes, it happened again, proving that the first time was the charm, and everything else was depressingly crappy.

The Gist: THE PORTOKALOS FAMILY IS IN FLUX. Patriarch Gus has died. Matriarch Maria (Lainie Kazan) has dementia and is in a nursing home. That leaves dear Toula (Vardalos) as successor to the family throne, surely constructed from bones and skulls. She isn’t burdened with holding the family together – she asserts that they’re “stuck together by their own sweat,” so that’s never going to be a concern. Rather, the task at hand is to deliver her father’s journal to his three beloved friends, who he left behind in Greece when the family immigrated to Chicago. This is not a task she can perform alone, lest the big fat formula be fractured, so she and her husband Ian (John Corbett) and college student daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) and brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) and Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) and Aunt Frieda (Maria Vacratsis) and Paris’ on-again-off-again not-current-boyfriend Aristotle (Elias Kacavas) all pile into a plane for what’s sure to be a zany vacay. Hooray?

Nay. They arrive in Greece and don’t appear to have booked any accommodations, possibly because Vardalos hasn’t written much of a screenplay. Good thing the first person they meet is Gus’ ex Alexandra (Anthi Andreopoulou), a babushka’d old woman who gives them a big room to crash in so one of them can declare “Family sleepover!” Then Alexandra nukes them with the news that she gave birth to Gus’ secret son, Peter (Alexis Georgoulis), and here he is. He seems nice! And so does the sheep that wakes them all in the morning, which has as much personality as anyone here (namely, not much).

There are a few subplots that happen while Toula tries to track down her father’s pals: Paris hasn’t told her parents she’s close to flunking out of NYU, and she has to contend with the Aristotle awkwardness, since she didn’t invite him along, one of her nosy, horny aunts did. Ian meets a local monk and soaks up his wisdom. When Nick’s not grooming his nose hairs at the breakfast table, he searches for his father’s favorite tree so he can spread the ashes. The town’s fountain is dry because there’s a big rock blocking the spring so maybe someone should move it? Occasionally, one or both of the aunts drop in to do or say something “hilarious.” Will any of these featherweight storylines come to fruition? The better question might be, will we give a damn about any of it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Congratulations to MBFGW3 for making me remember that When in Rome exists. Life is far, far better when movies like these are banished into the opaque ether of memory. 

Performance Worth Watching: I contend that Corbett calculated his performance to be as bland as possible so he wouldn’t be associated with the broad, vapid performances around him. Also presumably so we might forget he’s even in the movie in the first place.  

Memorable Dialogue: Let’s cherrypick a few doozies from the script: “I can do facials with Greek yogurt. Enemas too!” “Another brother. My mind is blown.” “A lady is never drunk!”

Sex and Skin: Is MBFGW3 the type of movie in which a character accidentally wanders into a nude beach only to find the wacky characters are already there, strategically holding comical objects in front of their naughty bits? Yes. Yes it is.

Our Take: The only thing in MBFGW3 that’s older than the jokes is the Parthenon. I challenge you to watch this and find a reason to laugh at something besides its incompetence. Vardalos’ screenplay is a collection of nonflicts resolved by luck and circumstance, because god forbid any of the characters do anything interesting. Meddling in each other’s affairs is at an all-time low among the Porotkaloses, and the fish out of water and ugly ducklings that define this franchise are all pretty much dead. Even though they’re in their homeland, these characters are all a little outside themselves, existing as empty vessels in front of lovely Greek scenery like dead cacti in the foreground of a postcard.  

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Of course, there has to be a wedding in the movie – because read the title, dummy – so Vardalos wedges one into the third act, involving a couple of sub-characters who are even more vacant than the primary ones. I speak vaguely not to avoid spoilers, but because it’s all so depressingly forgettable, the characters, the performances, the script, the comedy, the drama, all of it. I take that back – the direction and editing are memorably atrocious, Vardalos hacking up the footage until the film’s pacing and rhythm resemble that of a donkey dancing the watusi. By the way, are these people supposed to be in mourning? And why does Vardalos bother to sprinkle in some deeply half-assed commentary about the refugee crisis? I have no answers, and neither does the movie. Embarrassing!

Our Call: Let’s see – bedding, shredding, beheading… aha! My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3? More like My Big Fat Greek Dreading 3! SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.