'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3' review: No amount of Windex can shine up this lame threequel

Somebody please call off the wedding.

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," which comes 21 years after the first film became a surprise smash hit (and seven years after its wholly forgettable sequel), brings the Portokalos family on vacation to — where else? — Greece, home base for all their cultural jokes and references.

But while the cast and crew hopefully had a nice vacation while filming, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" barely holds together as a film, and comes across as a mishmash of unfunny skits with no emotional stakes or bearing in the real world. Any charm the series once had has worn out its welcome, and this saganaki has grown old and moldy.

Writer-director-star Nia Vardalos is back as Toula, who after the death of her father Gus — actor Michael Constantine, who played the role in the first two films and 2003's short-lived "My Big Fat Greek Life" TV series, died in 2021 — returns to Greece to fulfill his wish of gifting his journal to his long lost childhood pals. So the whole gang, including hubby Ian (John Corbett), daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris), brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) and various other cousins and aunts, packs up and heads overseas, where family secrets, complications and revelations await.

Did you know every word is derived from the Greek language? It was a running joke in the first two movies and it's back again here, just in case you didn't get it before. Did you know Greek families are overbearing and nosy? Again, well-charted ground, which is traversed again here. And just because Gus is gone doesn't mean there isn't room to squeeze in a Windex joke or two in his honor.

What's startling in all of this is the lack of spark, the lack of vibrancy in the script or in Vardalos' performance. Even the Greek scenery is flat; a week ago, "The Equalizer 3" made a vacation out of its Italian visuals, while nothing here pops or makes viewers feel like they're getting away for a little while.

A message of family and togetherness attempts to tie everything together in the end, but again, it's nothing that hasn't been covered before. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" serves only to trot out the past with increasingly diminishing returns. It's a Greek tragedy.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3'

GRADE: D

Rated PG-13: for suggestive material and some nudity

Running time: 91 minutes

In theaters