Some things, like ouzo and flaming cheese, are best left at single servings. It’s understandable that creator/writer Nia Vardalos would come back for seconds with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” — after all, the first was a sleeper megahit — but 14 years later, this reunion of cuddly-but-tiresome stereotypes makes you wish she’d left well enough alone. Toula (Vardalos) and her genial WASP hubby Ian (John Corbett) are now the parents of a teenager; the goth Paris (Elena Kampouris) chafes at the smothering Portokalos family and longs to go to college far away. As Toula says, her relatives “see no difference between hugging and strangulation.” Director Kirk Jones (“What To Expect When You’re Expecting”) lays it on thick, the entire extended clan popping up every time someone goes out to get the mail. The men gripe about the women, the women gripe about the men, and someone brings out a plate of spanakopita. Joey Fatone (from left), Louis Mandylor, Gia Carides and Stavroula Logothettis are back in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.” A trumped-up excuse for more nuptials has Toula’s father Gus (Michael Constantine) discovering a technicality that means he never officially married her mom, Maria (Lainie Kazan). He’s expecting a tirade, but she laughs it off: “I’m a hippie!” Kazan — who does have a wonderful laugh — gets the most interesting story line, with Maria planning a lavish wedding, but eventually questioning her entire culture. “In my day, you were raised to be married,” she says, and it’s a lament rather than a lecture. Meanwhile, Toula struggles with a marriage that’s lost its sizzle amid work, teen-wrangling and caring for elderly parents (a savvy plot point for an audience that’s likely to skew on the older side). Gus becomes obsessed with proving they’re all related to Alexander the Great via online genealogy, but can’t figure out how to turn on a computer — another supposedly hilarious bit. John Stamos and Rita Wilson make wholly useless cameos as neighborhood newcomers. “MBFGW2” brings back most of the familiar faces from the first film — hi, Joey Fatone! — and it’s nice to revisit this ensemble of real-looking people. Occasionally, Vardalos still makes a sympathetic narrator, rooted in a believable world of worrying about love and money and dealing with a demanding family and making it all work. Andrea Martin has a ball as racy Aunt Voula. One sibling even comes out of the closet. But these bright spots are mostly drowned out by the big, fat sequel machine, in which everything must be twice as clownish the second time around. Even the ever-resourceful Toula is no match for that.
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