"My Big Fat Wedding" is being released in time for Valentines Day. This film has been an indie runaway hit, grossing over $100 million in the box-office, and perhaps for that very reason I avoided it. I skipped the screenings, refused to see it in the theaters, and was pleased, without knowing why, when LA Times film critic Manohla Dargis wrote that the only thing independent about the film was where the money came from: the pockets of Rita Wilson and husband Tom Hanks. Well - that's one more thing to hold against Tom Hanks (as if Forrest Gump wasn't enough).

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is not only a bad, boring film: it is offensive. Sitting through ninety-five minutes of this reactionary junk put me in a bad mood for hours, and now, the next day, knowing how this film has been embraced by the American public, I can feel that bad mood coming back. Because without even bothering to properly review the film - the timing is bad, the jokes are stale, the drama is flat - the final message is abhorrent.

The film ends with former ugly duckling Toula (Nia Vardalos) happily married to her handsome wasp husband, living in the house next to her controlling Greek parents, telling her six year old daughter, "You can marry any one you want." And that's it. That's the bottom line. Not "be who you want to be, study anything that interests you, live any way you want, fall in love with a beautiful bisexual from Italy" (Asia Argento, for instance, might be appealing) but, "marry who you want." Wow, what a radical idea, and told with all the inventiveness of a sub-par TV sitcom.

Certainly don't buy this film (the DVD special features are nothing worth speaking of). Don't rent this film. See "Keeping the Faith," "Chaos," "My Brilliant Career," or "Ruby in Paradise" instead. And if someone close to you fell for this insipid pap, give them a hard time. Go to the library and take out a copy of Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality." Because if you support this movie, you might as well say: feminism is dead in this country and the Fifties are in. That's probably the case, but I'd rather pretend otherwise.