My Life in Ruins

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

A pleasant if unremarkable romantic comedy that plays out like a sitcom with great scenery.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Summery and scenic, Ruins is this season's "Mamma Mia!," a diversion that dispenses the wisdom: Let go, let live, and let love. Not bad advice, and not a bad movie, exactly.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film is so brazen about its pandering, crumple-hearted silliness that it had me rooting for Vardalos to land her big fat Greek stud-muffin.

The Hollywood Reporter Doris Toumarkine

Ruins is sometimes as sunny as its locations but as familiar and predictable as a Greek diner.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The problem with the new movie is the same as with the previous one. Vardalos has this idea that she's a marm. And while it's true that she personifies her movies, I don't quite buy her librarian mode.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

My Life in Ruins will neither ruin nor change nor significantly impact your life.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Kate Taylor

This paint-by-numbers romantic comedy is chock-a-block with jokey stereotypes – Americans are obnoxious, Canadians polite, and the Greeks just dance – yet lacking in any real drama, only occasionally mustering enough charm or humour to rise above a predictable formula.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Words cannot express how weary I am of watching lifeless, hollow movies like My Life in Ruins - generic romantic comedies that have no clue when it comes to either "romance" or "comedy."

Los Angeles Times Glenn Whipp

Doesn't skimp on the life lessons or instant transformations. But the movie primarily exists to give amiable Everywoman Vardalos the chance to regain her kefi.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Not likely to spur much tourism to Greece. The sights, though impressive, are not photographed interestingly, and the citizens of the host country are less than welcoming.

TV Guide Jason Buchanan

A benign, mushy gruel that tries desperately to maintain the sticky sweet consistency of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" but ultimately ends up coasting on the "kefi" of that previous success.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As a laughing-through-tears jokester tourist, Richard Dreyfuss provides the only moments of real acting, as opposed to overacting, mugging, and scenery chomping.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Vardalos has brought back the tourist comedy and delivered the dumbed-down "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Director Donald Petrie doesn’t have much to brag about here, but at least he gives us some nice scenery to look at.

Variety Lael Loewenstein

Feels like warmed-over souvlaki.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Cloying and dated movie.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Rarely has a film centered on a character so superficial and unconvincing, played with such unrelenting sameness. I didn't hate it so much as feel sorry for it.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

For movie-goers who like a little cleverness with their comedy, however, one word: N-opa.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Sheila Bernette, as an aged pickpocket, is less a stereotype than an escapee from some provincial British comedy of the early 1950s. But she steals necklaces and knickknacks with such finesse and gusto that she also steals the movie.

Washington Post Jan Stuart

Fittingly, My Life in Ruins goes downhill after its title.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

A strangely self-loathing affair that paints Vardalos's tour group as a uniformly ill-mannered, culturally illiterate bunch, while rendering Greece itself as a badly plumbed third-world hellhole run by lazy, Zorba-dancing louts.

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Binacolli

A cliché movie about love, orneriness and several maddening tourists.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Just to give you a taste of the movie's sophisticated idea of wit, it also makes fun of gay men.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

All ends happily for everyone in the movie, but for those in the audience, the experience is so hackneyed that they'll come out feeling like they're wearing shirts that say, "I went to the Acropolis, but all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen

Mike Reiss's witless, maudlin screenplay is like rancid leachate trickling from a Dumpster full of rotting sitcom scripts, Mary Kay sales manuals, and romance novels.