Muriel's Wedding (DVD)

1995 Australian side splitting Comedy - 'You're Terrible Muriel' being my favourite line, was written and directed by PJ Hogan (also directed My Best Friend's Wedding). Toni Collette plays Muriel in one of her first big screen roles. Muriel is a misfit, the one left out by the gang of girls, the fat one, the uglier one etc. She is obsessed by getting married. Also obsessed by Abba - a great combination !! We join Muriel at a wedding, she is dressed in the most amazing (not in a good way) Leopard print outfit, her so called friends are being mean to her (typical throughout) and the clerk from the store where she stole it from is at the actual wedding. She gets ...  Read the complete review

This has got to be one of the most under-rated and under-viewed films ever !! Why haven't more people seen this film ? I'm ALWAYS recommending it to people who haven't seen it and it's a shame because it's a fab little feel good film !! If you love Mamma Mia and/or the likes of 'It could happen to you', other feel good films, then you'll probably like this !! It's set in Australia and the wonderful and alo under-rated Coni Collette stars in the lead role as Muriel ( or Mariel as she later wants to be called ) daughter of local councillor Bill Hislop who has issues with his own ideas of his over-inflated self-importance, having an affair with Deidre, the glamourous ...  Read the complete review

One of Australia's finest contributions to film comes in the form of this often amusing and somewhat heartbreaking film. Released in 1995, it tells the story of the awkward Muriel who wants so desperately to fit in. Muriel comes from the nightmare family. Her father is an overbearing ne'er-do-well who has landed on his feet in politics, her mother is a battered down housewife who is caught stealing, and her siblings are a plain old fashioned embarrassment. Muriel longs to be better than she is, and thinks that if she becomes a wife, she'll become a different person. In the meantime, she gets by on the songs of an increasingly irrelevant Abba, ...  Read the complete review

Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette) lives with her family in Porpoise Spit, a small town in Australia. She is a bit of a social misfit, trying desperately to be in with the "in crowd" (four stuck up b**ches - probability ex high school cheerleaders - very popular with the boys), she's unemployed, into Abba (the band) and is obsessed by being a bride. People see Muriel as a "loser". Her father is "Councillor Bill Heslop" (Bill Hunter), a respected member of the community, her mother is "loosing her marbles" (cuckoo) and her brothers and sisters are useless layabouts. We are first introduced to Muriel at the wedding of ...  Read the complete review

In the 1990s the Australian film industry produced some of the most distinctive and successful comedies of the time, memorably Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Strictly Ballroom. The 1994 comedy Muriel's Wedding was one of these greatly anticipated Antipodean treats. The film became more than a mere cinema experience as the depiction of the Abba loving Aussie culture was soaked up worldwide and heralded as the spark that started the Abba revival though did they ever really go away? The impact of this film, launched on the back of other success Australian film exports, was quite stunning given its relatively unknown cast, most notably it was only the ...  Read the complete review