My Life in Ruinsa.k.a. “Erotas ala ellinika”

Those looking for the repeated quality of the classic “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding,” should stay away from this cheesy, one-dimensional failure. Filled with broad stereotypes and crude sexual content, “My Life in Ruins” is much better skipped.

Georgia (Nia Vardalos) moved to Greece to teach a dream job at a university. Due to the university’s budget cuts, Georgia is now stuck as a tour guide. Not only is she considered boring for actually trying to teach her tourists about Greece’s invaluable history, her boss also hates her. On her latest tour, she gets assigned a new driver and a new group. Along the four-day tour, Georgia loosens up, learns how to live life, and even finds herself in a new relationship.

Where to begin? This movie fizzles in almost every way. First, the film is filled with one-dimensional stereotypes of tourists: the ignorant, the drunk, the sexually promiscuous, and the snobby, miserably rich. The theater audience stayed mostly silent, except for a handful of chuckles. Secondly, most of the jokes were either clichéd, flat, or sexually crude.

Offensive Content

Almost all of the comedy is sexually based. It ranged from licking ice cream to give sexual hints to close-ups of homosexuals licking their lips, waiting for the ignorant American to get drunk. While no actual sex scenes are shown, they are heavily implied with some women in bras and wrapped in sheets. When Georgia sleeps with her new-found interest, she and an older tourist congratulate each other when they realize that they both had sex that night. Throughout the film, sex is also preached as a key to happiness and “having fun.” Georgia is considered uptight since she “has not had sex in forever.” When she’s told that “sex sells,” she quickly stops telling the rich history of Greece and starts reenacting a sex scene between Zeus and some female in mythology.

Richard Dreyfuss plays Irv, the wisecracking tourist who first annoys Georgia, but then later helps her loosen up to enjoy herself. His advice is entirely in opposition of God and completely worldly and dangerous. He encourages her to have sex and to get in touch with her wild side. We must remember when Paul wrote, “for the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Christians should take extreme caution in making sure that any worldly wisdom does not contradict with God’s Word. This reminds me of when Satan tried to tempt Jesus by giving folly worldly logic and even misquoting some Scripture. However, Jesus refuted everything the devil said by only using God’s Word as the true wisdom and not the foolishness of the world.

As for what this film aimed for, I am not entirely sure. If it was a coming-of-age movie, then its message is horrible by preaching to have sex outside of marriage. If it was meant to be a romantic comedy, there wasn’t much romance, since talking barely took place between Georgia and Poupi before their sleeping together, and as stated before, the comedy was just a few chuckles. My advice is to skip this movie.

Violence: Mild / Profanity: Mild / Sex/Nudity: Heavy

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