ORIGINALLY titled My Life In Ruins, Donald Petrie’s bumbling romantic comedy marks the long-awaited return of Nia Vardalos to the big screen, seven years after her self-penned, Oscar-nominated smash My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

In the interim, she wrote and starred in the ill-fated, spin-off television series My Big Fat Greek Life and the hit-and-miss drag queen comedy Connie And Carla, co-starring Toni Collette.

Driving Aphrodite returns Vardalos to her beloved Greece in the guise of an unhappily single tour guide, who is oblivious to Mr Right sitting at the front of her malfunctioning bus.

For the first time, she doesn’t speak her own words, relying on a screenplay by Mike Reiss, whose credits on The Simpsons and The Garry Shandling Show should guarantee big laughs.

For the first half hour, you’ll be hard-pressed to muster a smile as the film hastily introduces all of the holidaymakers, whose journeys of self-discovery run parallel to Vardalos’s spunky heroine.

Reiss makes the resolutions to these stories abundantly clear, practically handing out tissues in the first 10 minutes so we’re prepared for the death of one character, who evidently flew out to the holiday islands on Grim Reaper Airways.

Greek-American tour guide Georgia (Vardalos) has grown weary of the lack of respect shown by tourists to her beautiful country.