Tagline: Finally going to Greece.
Unlucky at both love and finding her dream job in the U.S., Greek-American history professor Georgia has come to Athens to regain her mojo—or kefi, as the Greeks call it. During an extended visit to a country whose locals can be counted on to commemorate failure and success with the same flamboyant spirit, Georgia signs up to be a professional tour guide, hoping she will find an eager audience for her encyclopedic knowledge of Ancient Greece among Athens’ many visitors.
Instead, the travelers who regularly fill Georgia’s tour bus are far more interested in lounging at Greece’s famous beaches than its celebrated UNESCO heritage sites. Her insistence that the vacationers listen to her scholarly lectures on the glory of the ancient world has made her the least popular guide in the history of Pangloss Tours. When she refuses to change her program to suit her customers, Georgia’s acerbic boss (Bernice Stegers) cuts a deal with another tour guide, the unctuous Nico (Alistair McGowan), to make her quit.
Georgia’s latest tour group is a motley crew – loudmouthed Americans in their baseball caps and sneakers (Rachel Dratch and Harland Williams), Australians who can’t put down the beer (Simon Gleeson and Natalie O’Donnell), the stuffy Brits (Ian Ogilvy and Caroline Goodall) and their sullen teenage daughter (Sophie Stuckey), a couple of recently divorced and hot-to-trot Spanish señoritas (María Botto and María Ádanez), a kleptomaniac senior citizen and her mute husband (Sheila Bernette and Ralph Nossek) and a workaholic, text-message addicted IHOP sales rep (Brian Palermo).
And then there’s Irv (Richard Dreyfuss), ‘Mr. Funny’ as Georgia would say. Irv has a quip, a joke or a gag for every occasion, each one cornier than the last, and he trots them out whenever the group’s interest in Georgia’s lectures begins to wane—which is quite often. At every stop, her charges rush off in search of souvenirs and ice cream instead of taking in the wonders right in front of them.
To make matters worse, Georgia has been assigned the most dilapidated tour bus in Europe, the crummiest hotels Greece has to offer and Pangloss’ scariest, hairiest and seemingly mute bus driver, Procopi “Poupi” Kakas (Alexis Georgoulis). Meanwhile, Nico, who is following the same itinerary, unleashes a series of mean-spirited pranks that turn Georgia’s group against her. With everything going wrong, a desperate Georgia begins to think about abandoning the tour—and her life in Greece.
But before she reaches the breaking point, a special someone on the bus takes Georgia on a personal detour that teaches her to look for beauty in people, not knowledge, and transforms the overeducated American tour guide into a full-fledged Greek goddess who enchants her reluctant group with a hot-blooded perspective on her ancestral homeland.
Read the Full Production Notes
My Life in Ruins
Starring: Nia Vardalos, Richard Dreyfuss, Harland Williams, Rachel Dratch
Directed by: Donald Petrie
Screenplay by: Mike Reiss
Release Date: June 5th, 2009
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content.
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $8,665,206 (55.7%)
Foreign: $6,881,437 (44.3%)
Total: $15,546,643 (Worldwide)