My Life in Ruins Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu-ray release
A Greek tour guide named Georgia attempts to recapture her kefi (Greek for “mojo”) by guiding a ragtag group of tourists around Greece and showing them the beauty of her native land. Along the way, she manages to open their eyes to the wonders of an exotic foreign land while beginning to see the world through a new set of eyes in the process.
For more about My Life in Ruins and the My Life in Ruins Blu-ray release, see My Life in Ruins Blu-ray Review published by Casey Broadwater on October 7, 2009 where this Blu-ray release scored 2.5 out of 5.
What do you get when you cross two obnoxious American tourists, a gaggle of polite Canadians, a
fatty Floridian, a pair of Spanish divorcees, a couple of drunk Aussies, an elderly kleptomaniac, a
crotchety widower, a family of aristocratic Brits, a syrup-loving IHOP franchise rep, and Nia Vardalos,
star of 2002's sleeper indie hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding? I wish I had a satisfyingly
hilarious punch line for you, but My Life in Ruins is only a joke in the pejorative sense.
What you get, then, is a menagerie of unfunny stereotypes traipsing through a been-done-to-death
narrative about a woman trying to find her lost passion, her mojo, joie de vivre, or kefi, as
it's known in Greece.
Transforming a $5,000,000 budget into a whopping $360,000,000 gross intake worldwide,
My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a big fat box-office triumph for independent filmmaking,
sparking an interest in "ethnic" stories, and putting then-buxom star Nia Vardalos in the national
spotlight. Since then, though, Vardalos has been conspicuously absent, aside from her short-lived
sit-com, My Big Fat Greek Life. Hoping that the lightning of her Mediterranean heritage
would strike twice, she purchased the script for My Life in Ruins from The
Simpsons scribe and The Critic creator Mike Reiss (who notes in his commentary
that he was paid a cool .5 million). Unfortunately, for her and us, this would-be follow up to
Greek Wedding is a trite rom-com that fails to recapture the magic, story-wise and
financially, not quite recouping the $17,000,000 bankroll needed to finance the
picture.
No, it's not a sequel, but with the addition of an explanatory prologue, it could have easily been
transformed into one. Instead, Vardalos plays Georgia here, a history professor who, after being
laid off from her post at Athens University, takes a gig giving bus tours to the obnoxious,
aforementioned stock characters. Georgia is sad, stuck, unsatisfied with her life, and less than
thrilled to be giving yet another tour to bored tourists who care more about the Hard Rock Café
than the Temple of Hephaestus. And I feel for her. It's bad enough that the tourists are
annoying, one-note characters, but most of them are being played annoyingly by actors who
blunder through the broadest, most inane comedic choices. Rachel Dratch and Harland Williams
are cast as the overly patriotic American couple, and every time they were relieved to find
someone who "speaks American" or failed to grasp how to haggle with street vendors, I couldn't
even summon the ire to cringe. The jokes are too stale to be anything more than eye-rolling. The
other cast members crumble under similarly clichéd performances, and though I understand that
the film can't devote the proper time to fully characterize the 15 or so odd bit players, the
decision to make them super-concentrated stereotypes simply doesn't work.
There are minor exceptions. Richard Dreyfuss is the film's highlight as Irv Gordon, a widower and
cantankerous funnyman who initially gives Georgia guff for being stuck-up. When the two start
seeing eye to eye, they're each able to help the other break through a psychological barrier.
Georgia grants Irv a place of honor as the tour bus's very own Greek god, helping him to get over
his wife's death in the process, and Irv gives Georgia the chutzpah to pursue the hirsute driver of
the bus, Mr. Pokopis "Poupi" Kakas (Alex Georgoulis). I only wish I were kidding. Sporting a
glorious Grizzly Adams beard, "Poupi" looks like a Grecian Neanderthal, and he seems at first to
have the communicative skills to match. Predictably, under the out-of-control facial hair lies a
muscle-bound Adonis, and when he shaves clean and expresses his poeticized take on bus driving
to Georgia, she melts quicker than the ice cream the tourists demand at every stop on the
itinerary.
Aside from a misguided rivalry with a sleazy fellow tour guide, there's little in the way of dramatic
conflict. The arc of the film can be summed up thusly: Georgia hates her job and the tourists
hate
her. Everyone slowly loosens up. Georgia gets shtupped by the driver, drops the historical shtick,
and gives everyone a relaxing day at the seaside. Everyone is happy. The film's message seems
to be "screw history, let's go to the beach," or perhaps "get laid and feel better about your life."
Pointless, bland, and emotionally hollow, My Life in Ruins is, at best, an innocuous rom-
com that will elicit a few minor chuckles over its 95-minute run time. Why do people watch this
stuff? Resisting…the urge…to pun…oh, I give up. It's all Greek to me.
For a fairly low-budget production, My Life in Ruins is visually pleasing on Blu-ray, with a
1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that proves vivid and crisp. Appropriately for such a Greece-centric
film, the color palette is awash in bold blues, like Georgia's blazer and the azure expanse of the
Aegean Sea. In general, colors are satisfyingly saturated, and flesh tones are—on the Greek
characters anyway—a natural, sun-soaked bronze. Black levels are nicely weighted, showing no
signs of crush, and while contrast is slightly overheated—pleasingly so in most scenes—there a few
shots that seems overexposed and much too bright. Clarity is no concern here, as the film exhibits
an all-around sense of sharpness that allows individual strands of Georgia's hair to be readily
discernable and background objects to be clear and resolved. I did notice the slight shimmer of
aliasing during one aerial shot of an amphitheater, but other than that, the transfer seems free of
any overt technical defects. The print itself is very clean, and no one will take issue with the thin
layer of grain that adds some warmth and texture to the image.
Like most romantic comedies, My Life in Ruins offers little excitement in the audio
department, arriving on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that does what it
needs to do without any added sonic bells and whistles. As much as I sometimes wished it weren't
so, the dippy dialogue is 100% clean, clear, and intelligible, leaving no questions about why
particular jokes fail. Surround speaker use is limited to bleeding score and environmental ambience
—you'll hear the wind rushing through ancient columns, water lapping in a marina, traffic sounds,
and party chatter—but you'd have to actively listen to make most of it out. Thankfully, there's a
decent spread in the front channels, which separate and distinguish the individual elements of David
Mullen's score. As you might expect, there's no real subwoofer engagement, but the track's
dynamic range has enough breadth to encompass what little audio diversity the film musters.
There's nothing overly impressive here, but this track does serve the film's intentions well.
Commentary Tracks
The disc includes three separate commentary tracks—one each from Nia Vardalos, director Donald
Petrie, and writer Mike Reiss—but none of them are interesting enough on their own, with the
exception of Mike Reiss, who has a ton of great anecdotes about his personal experiences on bus
tours. Yet even Reiss calls it quits slightly over an hour into his track, having run out of things to
say about the film and resorting to stories about The Simpsons. Vardalos' track is spotty
throughout, and while Petrie offers up loads of technical details about set design and scene
construction, there are few people who would actually care about that kind of discussion
regarding a movie like this. It would have been much better if all three participants had shared a
single track.
Everybody Loves Poupi (SD, 3:30)
"This is what you can do in the editing room when you have way too much time on your hands,"
says the director. What follows is a series scenes re-edited to make it look like everyone is
checking out Poupi.
Deleted and Alternate Scenes (SD, 12:38)
There are eight deleted scenes here, including a downer of an alternate ending. All the scenes are
available with optional commentary by the director.
Greeks and Greece-o-philes may get a kick out of seeing their favorite country back on the silver
screen, but My Life in Ruins is ultimately as lifeless and empty as the ancient stone
monuments it features. Despite a decent Blu-ray presentation, I'll give you a word of traveler's
advice—skip the bus tour.
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