My Life in Ruins (2009)

While the independently produced film My Big Fat Greek Wedding unexpectedly became the highest grossing romantic comedy of all time in 2002, that success did not translate into main stream stardom for its star and writer Nia Vardalos. So periodically Ms. Vardalos has attempted, and largely failed, to catch lighting in a bottle again, most obviously with 2016's My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, but also with this film My Life in Ruins. My Life in Ruins stars Vardalos as a professor of Greek antiquities reduced to being the tour guide on the B bus of a low rent tour company in Greece. She is depressed, how did my life come to this, I'm going to quite my job, then one tour changes everything when a widower played Richard Drefuss teaches her to be more positive, and she ultimately finds love with a bus driver named Poupie (Alexis Georgoluis). This movie has a 9% score on Rotten Tomato's, it's bad, and trite, and lazy and cheesy and seldom funny, but I really kind of liked it. Yes I enjoyed watching this I am a little ashamed to say. It's like a McDonald's hamburger of a movie, you know its not "good" but sometimes it still tastes "good" and you enjoy it. I think two of the reasons this movie worked for me is because 1) I have been on a tour group a time or two and can relate to that, and 2) I saw this movie with a group of co-workers and listening to some of them laugh as hard as they did really upsold the movie to me. The perfect kind of movie to play on a tour bus My Life in Ruins was a guilty pleasure viewing experience, but I doubt it would play as well on a second sit through. **