Muriel's Wedding

You gotta love the Hollywood marketing hacks. "Outrageously funny...you'll stand up and.....cheer!" Did they even watch the movie? Or was this a cynical ploy to try to make "Muriel's Wedding" into a more commercially viable film?

Either way, the marketing for this great little movie deserves an award for Most Misleading. In misrepresenting "Muriel," they reduced it to a fun "chick flick" in the minds of people who hadn't yet seen it. It's so much better than that.

A few years back, my then-girlfriend begged for this on one of our trips to Blockbuster, so I gave in, resigned to a night of gritting my teeth through a silly, formula-written, semi-feminist movie about a couple girls who have fun while getting even with their boyfriends or finally landing the big job or whatever the ending was gonna be.

Well, I was FLOORED by what "Muriel's Wedding" was, as well as what it wasn't.

The film is profoundly psychological and satirical. The person who sees Muriel, powerfully played by Toni Collette, and cannot empathize with her is a heartless, brainless schmuck indeed. Collette's performance and writer/director PJ Hogan's screenplay take Muriel through pretty much the whole range of emotion. Much of this emotion is negative, and it's really painful (but beautiful) to watch at several points. To watch Muriel's harrowing journey toward self-acceptance is to relive painful moments in your past, whether you are a man or a woman.

"Muriel" is also FULL of satire. It has a lot to say about marriage and family life, and little of it is good, although I believe it leaves plenty of room for redemption for Muriel and her abusive father (well-played by Bill Hunter).

"Muriel's Wedding" isn't a perfect movie, though it's pretty damned close. The scenes of Rhonda's and Muriel's life in Sydney, in particular, seem rather episodic, without strong threads to bind them. But this is almost quibbling with a great, great film.

That's the way "Muriel's Wedding" is. It affords you no escape, if that's what you are looking for. I think that's why most people are so p***ed off about it. They want to be entertained, not depressed by a film that has to do with real life. Well, I can't be too hard on these folks. It's really the marketing department's fault for their false advertising.

But if you want to see a very powerful film and are willing be really touched by a it, then see "Muriel's Wedding."

Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette) is the fat ridiculed girl. She catches the wedding bouquet and all the girls pressure her to give it up. Her family is a bunch of lay-abouts. Her father Bill is a bully and her mother is a pushover. Bill is a corrupt local politician in Porpoise Spit, Australia. Muriel daydreams, lies and steals. Deidre Chambers offers a job and her mother gives her a blank cheque to be paid to Deidre. Instead Muriel uses it for a vacation and finding a husband. She is spotted by Rhonda Epinstalk (Rachel Griffiths) from her childhood. She decides to run away to Syndey where she lives with Rhonda. Bill walks out on the family and is under investigation. Rhonda becomes a paraplegic from a tumor.

This is such a quirky funny Australian indie filled with dark wacky characters. It is such an odd unique movie. The humor comes from anger and mostly unlikeable characters. Muriel is not a normal character. She's insanely clingy, secretly bitter and outwardly delusional. The only normal character is Epinstalk and she faces some real darkness. The whole movie has a lot of darkness. There is a good deal of both laughing at Muriel and along with Muriel. There is also something ABBA that fits the craziness. It is both cheesy and upbeat. It keeps the movie from crumbling under the weight of Muriel's behavior and the small mindedness. Things get quite dark but it never succumbs to it. The last half's tone turn dark and ends in a very uplifting feel.

I saw this film a thousand times and I have always loved it! Originally I watched this movie because I'm a big ABBA fan, but I found out it's not all about ABBA!

This film makes you feel happy and sad at the same time. The acting is superb, especially the mother of the main character.

Just great!

10 out of 10

Muriel's Wedding is a feel good movie for the outcasts of the world. That means most people of course. At some time in our lives we all feel like the one who is left out of everything. Muriel's life is like that. Her "friends" put her down constantly and her father reinforces it by telling her how useless she (and every other member of her family) is while boosting his own ego by bragging about his connections.

There is no life in Porpoise Spit for Muriel. So after a couple of catastrophic embarassments and a chance meeting with an old school chum and fellow outcast she moves to Sydney. There she reinvents herself and discovers that despite what has been said about her and some pretty bad things she has done she is still a good person. Muriel stumbles on the way but finally frees herself (as does her mother) from the oppression of her hometown, her father, and her life.

Muriel isn't a totally likeable character. She steals, lies, and at one point does a perfectly terrible thing to her only friend. In the end however, Muriel recognizes that despite her shortcoming, physical and spiritual, she isn't the worthless creature her classmates and father have told her she is. To the credit of the filmmaker's they didn't do a complete remake of Muriel in the film to make her a beauty at the end. She gets a better hair cut but for the most part the improvement on her looks comes from within.

Muriel's father on the other hand is a completely despicable man. A local politician who tries to impress everybody with his connections he also put considerable effort into the degradation of his wife and children. His motto, the same as the town of Porpoise Spit, is "You Can't Stop Progress" but he manages to stop the progress of everyone in his family except for Muriel.

This is a very enjoyable film and a good example of the idea that a movie doesn't have to be a big Hollywood production to be great. I'm glad that it was produced in Australia. If it had been done in France then Hollywood would have done a remake in English and probably ruined it.

Muriel's Wedding is an Australian gem that perhaps suffers somewhat from being earmarked as a 'comedy'. Certainly there are plenty of laughs, but this film is no mere cheap and cheesy crowd-pleaser. As well as dealing with the insularity and cattiness of her hometown, Porpoise Spit, Muriel also must face the suicide of her mother and paralysing of her best friend. Yet, despite these tragedies, Muriel manages to come out on top, and at the same time strike a blow for anybody who has ever been snubbed by the in-crowd.

The characterisation in the movie is brilliant, particularly that of Muriel's family of no-hopers. Hoping to shed the title of "useless" bestowed on her by her father, Muriel (Toni Collette) absconds with the family's savings to an island resort, where she meets vivacious, straight-talking Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths). Rhonda is the catalyst for Muriel to become a new person, but unfortunately Muriel takes her obsession with weddings one step too far and marries just for the sake of it. She thinks she has finally "made it", but comes to realise that there's more to life than public image.

The soundtrack is a gloriously appropriate ABBA symphony, although both Dancing Queen and the film's original theme tune are over-utilised. It is surely partly due to ABBA's pleasant familiarity that it is so easy to become emotionally involved in the film, and the viewer will likely experience the whole gamut of feelings during its course. The finale, whilst upbeat, fortunately doesn't stumble into the realm of saccharine moralism (which so many filmmakers seem to think it is necessary to conclude with). Instead, we feel the triumph along with Muriel and Rhonda as they bid a raucous farewell to Porpoise Spit.