My Life in Ruins

In "My Life in Ruins," the American tour guide she plays, Georgia Yanakopulos, wants to educate the travelers on her tours about Greek history (she's an unemployed professor). Georgia knows the dates every column was erected, who lived where, which god thought what. Yet the evaluations sent to her undermining boss (Bernice Stegers, who's a hoot) complain that her tours are boring. People just want to tan, eat, hook up, and shop - goals one should be able to achieve without signing up for a weeklong trip on a tour bus, but never mind. The point is that Georgia doesn't please her crowds. She numbs them with facts.

But she's decided to quit. So this latest tour will be her last. And for the occasion, it's a deluxe edition of her usual busload of obnoxious Americans, stuffy Brits, horny Spaniards, and kooky old people. The one with the most common sense, a boisterous widower played by Richard Dreyfuss, tells Georgia to loosen up. He shoves her toward the tour's handsome, hairy bus driver (Alexis Georgoulis). And, reluctantly, she complies, but not enough to stop seeming like a harried schoolteacher on a field trip. (She's also competing with an oily rival guide, whose tours are "fun.")

There's a degree of narcissism to Vardalos's self-deprecation. She may want us to find her plain, but she snuffs out any chances at being naturally funny. Charming might work for her, but she can't be above the zaniness that surrounds. When Dreyfuss tells her to lighten up he's doing the job of the movie's actual director, the dutiful Donald Petrie. Vardalos has a loony, Streisand side. But here she lets the rest of the cast clown it up, while she plays the wallflower. You have to believe in this approach to comedy for it to work. And I don't believe Vardalos when she plays it this straight.