It's all very sitcom in a lazy, messy way that makes you appreciate sitcoms. The elders were free spirits in their youth, but the daughter seems to want her big idiotic Greek wedding. Streep plays the relatively sane and sturdy center of her circle, while Baranski is a man-killer and Walters the acerbic quipster. Among the men, Firth is the uptight banker, Skarsgard the hardy adventurer, and Brosnan the cool all-rounder: Streep's own Mr. Big. It's like Family Ties meets Sex and the City on a glittering Mediterranean isle.
The estimable Firth turns gentleness and self-consciousness into comic tools until he's saddled with a cheap-joke ending, and Brosnan is briskly affable until he opens his mouth to sing and starts hurling aural fur balls.
Whenever the older women get a chance to put over a relatively quiet, unbroken section of song, they're undercut by the swelling orchestration or director Lloyd's clunkiness. Choreographer Van Laast must think it's infinitely funny to turn nameless island workers and partygoers into a combination Greek chorus and chorus line. Believe me, the humor here is finite.
