My Life in Ruins (Driving Aphrodite)

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My Life in Ruins (Driving Aphrodite)

43% Liked It
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My Life in Ruins (Driving Aphr...

Nia Vardalos, Richard Dreyfuss, Harland Williams, Rachel Dratch, Caroline Goodall

MY LIFE IN RUINS is a romantic comedy set amongst the ruins of Ancient Greece. Georgia (Nia Vardalos) is a Greek-American tour guide who leads an assorted group of English, Australian and American tou...( read more  read more... )rists around Greece. Tourists who would rather buy a T-shirt than learn about history. In a hysterical clash of personalities and culture, everything seems to go wrong. Until one day, a very special tourist shows her how to have fun... and turn around and take a good look at the last person with whom she'd ever expect to find love.

Id: 11061607

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My Life in Ruins (Driving Aphrodite) Recent Reviews
  • irisheyes686
    October 20, 2009
    irisheyes686
    I thought this was adorable! I was cracking up almost the entire time. Sure, there were some cheesy parts, but I really enjoyed it.
  • PvtCaboose91
    October 20, 2009
    PvtCaboose91
    "Greece. A year ago I hit rock bottom, so I came here to reconnect with my soul - find my mojo. Or kefi, as the Greeks call it."


    Throughout My Life in Ruins, a couple of characters are frequently told that they're not as funny as they believe they are. Unfortuna

    ...( read more)tely, those watching the film will echo this sentiment as they endure the clichés and predictable scenarios it provides, on top of the forced attempts at humour that wouldn't pass muster for the world's worst sitcoms. My Life in Ruins is a generic romantic comedy that has no clue when it comes to romance, comedy, or above all charm. The "comedy" is based almost entirely on stereotyping nationalities, the story is trite, and the main coupling is devoid of that hard-to-pin rom-com necessity: chemistry! This godawful motion picture merely plays out like an obnoxiously terrible, been-there-seen-that sitcom. "Ruins" is indeed an apt descriptor of this flick.


    My Life in Ruins follows a history-professor-turned-tour-guide living in Greece named Georgia (Vardalos). She hates her job, fusses because she's always assigned the second-rate tourists, and finds faults with everything in Greece that isn't a few thousand years old. Feeling the job is beneath her, and having a deep love for Greek history, Georgia tends to bore her tour companions by offering historical trivia when they'd rather shop for souvenirs, grab an ice cream or spend a day at the beach. In a traditional rom-com Character Rehabilitation Journey (TM), Georgia attempts to regain her "kefi" (Greek for "mojo") through guiding a group of difficult tourists around Greece.


    The core of the story is about Georgia's life view being changed when she falls in love with the tour's bus driver, Poupi (Georgoulis), and her learning a thing or two from the most flamboyant of the tourists, Irv (Dreyfuss). Suffice to say, by the film's dénouement Georgia has transformed herself from boring, inept tour guide into the best that Greece has to offer, and she's beloved by everyone in her group. Georgia also has a nemesis in the form of competing tour guide Nico (McGowan) who wants to torture her into quitting, but he's eventually humiliated and decides to quit himself. There's a bored teenage girl (Stuckey) in the film as well who is at first reluctant about Greece but eventually finds the guy of her dreams... Stop me if any of this sounds familiar... The problem with My Life in Ruins is that this isn't a lively rerun of every rom-com cliché in existence - it's a dreary tour through Clichéville that wouldn't be interesting even if it was original.


    The screenplay by Mike Reiss (a sitcom writer, unsurprisingly) utilises the multiple-day tour as an excuse to showcase brainless cultural stereotypes which are as plentiful as they are offensive. The woeful surface-level caricatures range from boorish Americans and drunk Aussie bogans with an unlimited supply of Foster's (who should be deported for treason) to snooty shoplifting seniors from England and sexed-up Spanish cougars. There's a corporate representative thrown in the mix as well, who spends his screen-time making pancake puns. Pancake puns! Surely there were funnier avenues to explore with this plotline - all we get are unfunny one-liners, cheap detours into homophobia, and Nia Vardalos mugging the camera in an alarming manner. Screenwriter Reiss spent a period writing The Simpsons when it was actually good (he even wrote the feature film), so where is that wit?! Rather than wittiness, Reiss conceives characters named Poupi and Doudi... How ironic it is that infantile poo jokes have been used for a turd of a comedy.


    At the helm of My Life in Ruins is Donald Petrie, whose filmography is so badly tarnished that it's surprising any producer (let alone Tom Hanks) would allow him anywhere near a project of potential value (his prior cinematic "masterpieces" include Just My Luck and Welcome to Mooseport). Not only is Petrie despondently clueless when it comes to conjuring a ghost of a romantic spark between Vardalos and Georgoulis, but he's also unable to accomplish what should've been the easiest task: gorgeous scenery. Greece is incredibly photogenic, yet this director imbues the movie with a depressingly commonplace look. Even an amateur home video taken by a bunch of tourists would be less dreary than this.


    Nia Vardalos is practically a one-hit acting wonder. After My Big Fat Greek Wedding, her career has only spiralled downwards. In My Life in Ruins, there's nothing human about her character - she plays a walking cliché, and her performance is unable to elevate the material. She's slightly watchable, but spending 90 minutes with her is too much.
    The rest of the cast is left floundering amid a sea of exasperating stereotypes. It should come as no surprise that Richard Dreyfuss is the film's only bright spot - he isn't enough to make this rubbish tolerable as a whole, but the actor deserves some credit. Playing the character who dispenses homespun wisdom (essentially the Midwestern version of Morgan Freeman), Dreyfuss appears to commit to the moronic antics that are asked of him, which is either the result of terrific professional courtesy or heavy drinking in between takes. His constantly weary expression is most likely a sign of grief due to being coaxed into starring in this crap purely for the money and sightseeing opportunities.


    Ostensibly a film about the protagonist's mental transformation, My Life in Ruins is really just a long scenic tour of every rom-com cliché imaginable. It's a profoundly nauseating film that grows progressively more repellent as time goes by... A beautiful place like Greece deserves a far better travelogue than this, and a better spokesperson than the utterly charmless Vardalos. It seems that even with excellent movies hitting cinemas in this day and age (like Up or Drag Me to Hell), awful movies like My Life in Ruins are always lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce upon us and remind us that bad films are just as common - if not more common - than the quality ones.
  • moonrivers
    June 9, 2009
    moonrivers
    didn't see "greek wedding" and i don't have a teevee so this actress, Nia Vardalos was a surprise...quirky and somehow different. dreyfuss is the fount of wit and wisdom here and everyone else is similarly and stereotypically cast and played in a stereotypical romantic comedy wh...( read more)erein greece is the background. i have a flixsterfriend to whom i promised i'd watch at least one greek film and somehow now feel as if i've heroically made good on my promise, filling my yearly quota of foreign films, so yay, now i'm a film snob!
  • KellBell184
    June 6, 2009
    KellBell184
    Greece is pretty....that's kind of it. It's not a film to see over and over again by any means.
  • Parannoyed
    January 1, 2010
    Parannoyed
    I liked it for what it's worth: entertainment.
  • jaynejetson59
    January 2, 2010
    jaynejetson59
    Really cute movie. A movie that I would watch again & I can't say that for many.
  • sydneyalbritton930
    December 31, 2009
    sydneyalbritton930
    i really want to see this too.
  • SarahTheMovieLover
    December 27, 2009
    SarahTheMovieLover
    I will start by saying that I doubt many people will enjoy this movie like I did, but I don't care.
    This movie made me so happy. So what if it was predictable and not original? I loved it. It was well rounded with humor and good meaning and the beauty of Greece (of both the arc...( read more)hitectural and human variety). I laughed a lot and smiled a lot, I even almost cried.
    Argue with me all you like, but I loved it.

    What did this movie teach me? No man should have a beard. It hides his real beauty.
  • thetangerinne
    December 27, 2009
    thetangerinne
    Comédias, como já disse, não são o meu forte. Sempre tenho para elas um olhar desconfiado de que ou será fraca demais ou pastelão demais. No caso desse Falando grego, fica um meio termo. É um filme passatempo, bobinho e sem pretensão nenhuma. Pudera. Em tratando-se de história, é...( read more) um passeio de 90 miinutos pelas belas e antigas construções gregas, onde desfila um sem número de estereótipos em se tratando de turistas. Temos a impressão, ao vê-los bobos e desajustados, que são quase seres vindos de qualquer lugar, menos da Terra, tamanha falta de bom senso. Cada país é aqui registrado com uma marca peculiar por seus representantes. O que o torna até mais engraçado, ao pensarmos que é justamente um filme sobre turismo e todas as confusões que isso possa envolver. Comédia pouca é bobagem!
  • RosAzzo
    December 27, 2009
    RosAzzo
    I really liked it! Sweet :)
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