Review
Culture
Film & TV
7 min read

Two terrible travelogues in search of their storylines

Yaroslav Walker would rather get to a monastery than recommend these threequels.

Yaroslav is assistant priest at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London.

A family arrive at an overnight stay, enter a room and look around uncertainly
The cast of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 look for its storyline.
Universal Pictures.

Welcoming a baby boy to my family (pause for applause) has left my September rather busy, and I couldn’t face anything too meaty and intelligent and subtle in my viewing: I wanted some simple fare that would be both entertaining and familiar. I was, therefore, delighted to see that September was a month of ‘threequels’. I am a big fan of both My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Equalizer; they are uncomplicated and inviting, funny and charming, doing what they do (romantic comedy/culture-clash/action/man-against-the-world) efficiently and good-naturedly… 

Their third instalments fail spectacularly. 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is neither charming nor funny, and it hardly has any wedding in it. The first instalment was a delightful example of a classic American movie trope: culture clash between the first and second generation immigrant communities that make up the country. Tula Portokalos falls in love with a handsome WASP, while her family want her to marry a nice Greek boy. As they prepare to marry, Nick (the fiancé) has to assimilate to the Greek way of living (and really rather likes it) and Tula comes to learn to be far more accepting of her heritage and her family. Part two is less funny and less engaging – a convoluted plot about the mother and father of Tula never being truly married, and having a later-life wedding – but revisits the old favourite characters, and introduces a daughter to take up the ‘growing-pains-culture-clash’ dynamic (Tula repeating her father’s iconic line in a nice way).  

My Big Fat 3k Wedding has now divested itself of all humour and winsomeness. Gus (the patriarch) is dead, and his widow may have dementia. It was his dying wish that his children take his old diary and hand it over to his three childhood friends. Its Holiday on the Buses then. Its ‘we-have-run-out-of-ideas’ so let’s go abroad. It’s a travelogue rather than a rom-com, focused on giving you an lovely panoramic shot of provincial Greek living. That aspect of it is fairly spectacular: the cliffs, the sea, the distressed cottages with just the right amount of cracked plaster and whitewash…ah, 90 minutes of that would’ve been lovely. Instead, the truly great character of the Greek countryside is constantly sidelined by turgid dialogue and performances that are either flatter than a pita or a gurning mess better suited to children’s television. There is one good joke delivered in such a staccato as to miss the punchline, half of the original characters are absent, and the wedding comes out of nowhere and doesn’t have any impact. 

The truly frustrating thing is that there seems to be no central theme, no thrust, no point. The first was a classic rom-com, with elements of culture clash and ugly duckling and mad families. The second was about aging and how parenting changes you. 3k Wedding has too many themes and none. A storyline about having a parent with dementia, ignored. A story about grief, barely given the time of day. A story about forbidden love and refugees and the migrant crisis, there only when convenient. A story about bucolic provinciality coping with a 21st century world, there only in snatches. The closest thing to a coherent theme is that of culture and soil and homeland having a pull and a power on even those who grew up across an ocean, and that is a genuinely interesting idea to explore…then a gurn and a non-joke and a shot of a goat…its rubbish. 

1.5 stars. 

The Equalizer 3

A serious looking man in black sits pensively on a carved chair.
The Equalizer will not be happy with this review.

A travelogue at the start of the month and one at the end with The Equalizer 3. 3qualizer is a second reuniting of star Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua, who made some cinematic magic with the first film. Denzel is Robert McCall, an expert government assassin who can kill you within 9 seconds, and that’s without a weapon in his hand. McCall starts the first film adrift, his wife has died and he is retired and now he has no direction or purpose. His spark of life is reignited when he meets a young prostitute, takes pity on her, and proceeds to kill every Russian mobster who has ever even looked at her.  

It is glorious. McCall’s obsessive-compulsive precision is turned into a joyous conceit where he can say exactly how long it will take him to kill every person in the room. It is pacy, it is non-stop, with a simple yet effective plot and a mesmerising Denzel performance (when is he anything less!?). The second instalment is less effective, with a more meandering plot, but still good fun. McCall has decided he will find meaning in his later life by putting his skills to the service of the underdog. He is The Equalizer, cutting villains down to size and bringing justice to the lowly. He takes on a fatherly duty with a young man who is in danger of joining a gang, and he executes all the bad men who killed his oldest friend.  

3qualizer is…in Italy. Why is it in Italy? No idea. Perhaps McCall has caused too much property damage in the US. McCall is sitting in a chair in a wine cellar in Sicily. A bad man walks in. He informs him how many seconds it would take and then dispatches the rotters. As he is leaving he is shot (in the buttocks?) by the young son of the chief baddy. He drives as far as the Amalfi Coast where he is saved by a local policeman and a local doctor. Then…he goes for walks. He enjoys Italian coffee. He meets the locals. He eats pasta. He becomes both dull and unbearably quirky at the same time.  

There is no real plot. Mafiosi terrorise the town for no discernible reason. McCall kills them. More Mafiosi come. McCall kills them. Two…two action scenes after the wine cellar, that is all I counted. When the film ended I had to do a double take and wonder if I’d fallen asleep. I’m not suggesting the first two films were Barry Lyndon, but they had a plot with some twists and turns – 3qualizer has a whole lot of scenery. Like Greece, the Amalfi Coast looks gorgeous, but I didn’t pay my money to watch an extended message by the Italian tourist board.  

There’s a side-story about a CIA agent cutting her teeth on the fallout of the Sicily shootout…why? Mysterious as McCall’s original presence there. Nothing makes any sense or connects and it's just as turgid as 3k Wedding, which is far worse a sin for an action movie to commit. So you know, both questions are answered at the end of the film and the answers relate to nothing, NOTHING we see in the main body of the film. 

McCall’s story ends with him being embraced by the villagers and him embracing them…? I HAVE NO IDEA! It is unclear and sloppy, and (perhaps because of the boredom he must have felt while filming) Denzel Washington has turned McCall’s dangerous precision into a series of tics and twitches which are simply alarming.  

1 star. 

Two very disappointing cinematic outings which, despite being very different genres, make the same errors. Perhaps because they seem to be scrabbling to explore the same theme. What is home? What does it mean to be home and know you are home? What does it mean to be comfortable and accepted and know yourself as yourself in the place that you are? Tula seems to be trying to understand this and explore the entire concept of the ‘immigrant mindset’ by going to Greece to see her father’s village…I think this is what she is doing, again, the film makes it hard to understand its own themes. McCall is a man who has no home – his career was spent travelling (alienated from his home soil), his wife is dead (alienated from his family), and he is a man who has killed too many people (alienated from himself). Perhaps a small fishing village will give him the simplicity of life that can save his sense of self. 

Both Tula and McCall start to unravel their existential crises by fleeing the big city, embracing quieter and humbler surroundings, and coming to understand the nature of community that is symbiotic and self-giving and joyous (something McCall has never had, and something Tula has struggled with in terms of her own family). In both, there is something of a monastic pattern. Coming away from distraction and metropolitan living and building a community of reciprocity in the wilderness, this is the aboriginal pattern of life for the monk and the nun – from St Anthony in Egypt to St Benedict in Italy, Christians in the East and West have benefited greatly from the prayers and example of holy men and women who live the ‘religious life’. 

The great insights of monastic living – simpler living of work and rest in intentional community where one lives from the whole as much as for the self – are having a bit of a come-back in secular society. Whether it is the meditative practice of the Desert Fathers entering mindfulness manuals, or the Rule of St Benedict (ordering the life in community for a Benedictine monk) being used to train managers in major companies, the wisdom of monasticism has endured even into the 21st century post-Christian world. Tula and McCall find some peace in this wisdom; they don’t embrace the religious life, but they do find comfort and stillness and real joy in a life that slows its pace and opens itself up to a community of service and sacrifice and love. 3k Wedding might symbolise this with the presence of an actual monk in the film…doubtful, but one can hope. 

This is an insight far better expressed by reading about monasticism. Do that, rather than watch these films. They’re rubbish.

Review
Community
Culture
Music
4 min read

Oasis: If feuding brothers can get together again, maybe the country can too

Some might say Liam and Noel Gallagher’s reunion is reminiscent of Joseph, Prince of Egypt.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two middle age rock star brothers pose for the camera in a black and white picture
Any dream will do.
Liamgallagher.com.
Get updates

There’s a man with a black rainhat and jacket on the stage swearing at over 50,000 teenagers. It’s Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of Oasis, that iconic 90s rock band. He’s singing his way through the entire Definitely Maybe album to mark the 30-year anniversary of its release. Somehow, these 50,000 teenagers know all the words, as they sing along on a warm summer evening for their rite of passage that is the Reading Festival.  

I feel strangely alone in the crowd. I remember where I was when the album was first released - nobody around me was even born then. On the stage, Liam too is strangely alone. For 15 years he’s been estranged from his brother Noel – the song-writing genius behind all of Oasis’ greatest hits. He’s in a reflective mood as he sings ‘Live Forever’: 

“Maybe I will never be, all the things that Ii want to be, now is not the time to cry, now’s the time to find out why”

(Live Forever) 

This lyric has aged well. Back when Liam was 21 years old, about to be biggest band in the world, about to see their album become the fastest selling debut album of all time, he wasn’t seriously considering the question.  

Back then, fame didn’t seem to suit him. He famously ditched a huge US tour with the band, when he was about to board the plane from Heathrow. He stubbornly refused to go on stage for the MTV unplugged concert at the Royal Festival Hall despite a packed-out audience and a full orchestra on the stage. Maybe it was youth. Maybe it was anxiety. Maybe it was some illegal substance. 

Even now, at Reading, with rumours rife of a reunion tour, Liam seems a little vulnerable. He delivers a brilliant vocal performance to a huge crowd, but his hat covers most of his face for the entire concert. He mentions that he had thought the young people getting their GCSEs might have let their academic excellence go to their heads, but they turned out to be “alright” after all. And then, with more swearing, more swaggering guitar chords and more defiant sneering vocals, there comes more vulnerability:  

Their song brought the country together in a pledge of hope. While terrible things are going on around us in our world, we need all the togetherness and hope we can get.

“All this confusion, nothings the same to me, I can’t tell you the way I feel, because the way I feel is oh so new to me”

(Columbia) 

Liam dedicates “Half a World Away” to his brother Noel, and then the promise of something more… “27/08/2024 8am” is revealed on the huge screen. Is there going to be more to the Oasis story? Could the feuding brothers have buried the hatchet?  Have they listened to their own lyric – don’t look back in anger – and decided to drop the bitterness and animosity and find a new way forward? 

I wonder how the reconciliation happened. I like to imagine it was like Joseph, Prince of Egypt and wearer of coat-of-many-colours, finding himself face-to-face with the brother who tried to murder him all those years earlier, and privately breaking down in tears before declaring “God meant it for good”.  

I like to imagine it was like Joseph’s father Jacob, Patriarch of Israel and hot-headed runaway, returning to his twin brother Esau after two decades of separation, praying he would be received favourably, and overwhelmed when his prayer was answered. 
 
‘Some might say’, excuse the pun, that the timing of this impossible reconciliation is less to do with making peace and more to do with making money. The Gallagher brothers have both been through costly divorces. Perhaps they have seen the appetite for megatours as demonstrated by Taylor Swift’s Era’s extravaganza.  

A few days later there is controversy brewing around dynamic pricing which is adding to the rumours of extortionate profiteering. Presale tickets initially range from £73 to £205, with standing tickets priced around £150. Then resale prices skyrocket, with some tickets listed for as much as £6,000—approximately 40 times the original price. It remains uncertain how much of these profits Oasis directly receives. 
 
And then there is the timing. Next year the ownership of the Oasis back-catalogue reverts back to Noel. Only a few months ago Queen sold the rights to their back-catalogue to Sony Music in a record-breaking $1.27 billion, surpassing previous deals such as Bruce Springsteen's sale for $500 million. A sell-out tour will go a long way to upping the value of the Oasis catalogue.  

Whatever the motivations, whoever is profiting, and however genuine the reconciliation, the reforming of Oasis, in my eyes, is a great moment for our country.  I’ll never forget the woman who spontaneously sang “Don’t Look Back in Anger” after the minute’s silence to remember the 22 Ariana Grande fans killed at the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017. While Noel and Liam were still feuding, their song brought the country together in a pledge of hope. While terrible things are going on around us in our world, we need all the togetherness and hope we can get.