With Jim Sabatini

My Life in Ruins

Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by: Chris
Release date: June 5, 2009	Released by: Fox Searchlight Pictures

If you're looking for a beautiful travelogue of Greece, with a bit of romance thrown in, then Nina Vardalos' (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) hopes you'll catch her new film.

She plays Georgia, an ex-history professor who works as a travel guide after losing her teaching job. She tries very hard to inspire her groups to fall in love with the ancient Greek ruins as she does, but they'd rather shop at cheap souvenir shops than soak in the beauty around them.

Her tour group is made up of cliched characters. Richard Dreyfus is a widower with a string of bad jokes, a loud American couple (Rachel Dratch and Harland Williams) looking for bargains and rude, bickering parents to a sullen teen, make up some of the obnoxious group.

They all pile into an old, exhaust-spewing bus driven by a long-haired, messy-looking Greek (Alexis Georgoulis) that brings the motley crew from one beautiful ruin to another. And along the way, Georgia learns to warm up to the tourists and more importantly, to the driver, who gets better looking every time he shed some hair.

Directed by Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality), Vardlos is straightforward and sassy. There a couple of smiles and plenty of breathtaking scenes.