User reviews

This is truly a great Australian film, and still holds up after all these years. The film has always hit a nerve with me in terms of the Heslop's family dynamics (Mum, make Dad a cup of tea!). I can only speak for myself but I grew up in Queensland around the same time (I am aware this was made in New South Wales) and my experience with my family definitely resonates with that of Muriel's with her family. I really thought at the time this came out that this type of family dysfunction was 'an Aussie thing', but I know better than that now that I am older and wiser.

I've never thought of this as a comedy although it has some very funny moments. Even now, I have to be in the mood for Muriel's Wedding due to it's brutally harsh treatment of it's characters. The film is vicious and unrelenting and has made me cry more than once. But it's also a cathartic experience, about a person with flaws like all of us, who is trying to find her own identity, and, despite what she has been conditioned to believe, that she is worthy.

After watched this movie in late of nineties and found it above average movie, many years this film was release on DVD here for an small label, today l re-watched it again this amazing movie about self respect, love, loyalty, contempt and mainly happiness, Toni Collette in your best role ever, gave to the movie a cult reputation, incredible funny sometimes and sadness too, supported by Abba soundtrack it's a really fresh and original movie from Australia.

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.

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.

One of the hallmarks, and one of the strengths, of the Australian cinema, is originality, the ability to produce films quite different from anything in the Hollywood or British mainstream. This ability dates back to the days of "Walkabout", "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and "Crocodile Dundee", and the offbeat comedy "Muriel's Wedding" from 1994 falls within the same tradition. It also falls within the recent Australian tradition of films satirising life in the provinces while retaining a certain affection for those that live there. ("Sweetie" and "Opal Dreams" are other examples). The film was written and directed by Paul J. Hogan, not to be confused with his namesake Paul Hogan of "Crocodile Dundee" fame.

The main character, Muriel Heslop, is a young woman in her early twenties from the fictitious Queensland seaside town of Porpoise Spit. Her life is dominated by her tyrannical father Bill, an ambitious and corrupt local politician, whose family seem crushed by the weight of his expectations. Muriel's mother Betty is a downtrodden, subservient wife and her siblings are lazy, unambitious and permanently unemployed, with no interests in life other than watching television. She herself is overweight, naïve and socially gauche; she is mocked by her contemporaries, even those she considers her friends, for her weight, her lack of social graces, her lack of fashion sense, and her obsession with the music of ABBA, regarded as hopelessly untrendy by the mid-nineties. (Several ABBA songs feature on the soundtrack). Although she has never had a serious boyfriend, her one great ambition is for a glamorous wedding.

Muriel's life changes when, while on holiday, she makes a friend named Rhonda who, unlike her Porpoise Spit contemporaries, is prepared to accept Muriel for what she is. Muriel leaves her family to set up house in Sydney with Rhonda and eventually achieves her dream of a big white wedding, although the circumstances are rather unusual. Muriel's husband is David, a handsome young South African swimmer, whom she hardly knows but who needs an Australian passport in order to swim for his adopted country in the Olympics. (This plot line suggests that the film was originally conceived several years earlier, when South Africa was banned from international sport because of apartheid).

Toni Collette was relatively unknown in 1994, but this was the part that first brought her to international attention, and she gives an excellent performance, making Muriel an appealing heroine despite her social awkwardness. There are some other good performances, such as from Bill Hunter as Muriel's autocratic father, but I was less taken by Rachel Griffiths as Rhonda, even though I have admired Griffiths in other films such as "Hilary and Jackie". Although she is supposed to be a likable character, Muriel's one true friend who loves her for what she is and who copes bravely with illness and disability, I found the foul-mouthed, promiscuous Rhonda a bit too abrasive to be sympathetic.

Although "Muriel's Wedding" is a comedy, and in places a very funny one, it also deals with some serious themes, and avoids Hollywood sentiment. (Hollywood would doubtless have made Muriel slimmer and prettier, would given greater prominence to David and would have turned the film into a rom-com in which the two young people end up falling madly in love). It is essentially a coming-of-age story, what in German would be called a "Bildungsroman". It is the story of the heroine's discovery of self-confidence rather than self-loathing, of how she learns to accept herself for what she is. It is notable that for much of the film she insists on being called "Mariel", only to revert to "Muriel" by the end. Behind the humour and the satire the film is often touching and poignant. 7/10

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's wedding is a solid work of Australian comedy, with great acting and a funny script, however I also found it a touch sad.

The film kept taking emotional turns, from hilarious to depressing. The main character, Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette), was funny in a very human way. She shows the audience a quirky, yet believable example of human fallibility, as the girl who never quite meets the standard. Muriel's character is defined by her inability to fit in - despite many attempts. She has a dysfunctional family and weird obsessions with Swedish pop group ABBA, and getting married.

All the characters play emotional roles, and the acting performance by Collette and Rachel Griffiths (as Muriels best friend), are inspirational.

I laughed a lot, but came away with a general sense of sadness about the emotional cruelty of human beings, and the suffering some people endure. I found the character of Muriel's mother particularly sad, but well acted.

Many people I've talked to hated this film, but it remains one of my favourite comedies. As someone who really enjoys Aussie films, I think this was one of the better ones.

Toni Collette wants to have "Muriel's Wedding" in this 1994 Australian film, directed and written by P.J. Hogan. Muriel is a social outcast living with her dysfunctional family and fantasizing about a better life for herself, as exemplified in Abba music. She wants the excitement the music has, the fun, the prettiness, the glamor. Most of all, she wants a fabulous wedding. Her dreadful father (Bill Hunter) constantly puts her down and constantly elevates himself. He's a councilman. He asks a friend, Deirdre, who has a cosmetics company like Mary Kay, to give Muriel work. He gives Muriel a blank check so she can buy what she needs and start selling. Muriel takes the blank check to the bank, cleans out her father's bank account and heads for a resort where four girls from the "in crowd" - who don't want Muriel around - have gone. There she meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) and starts to have some of the fun she's dreamed about. From there, she moves to Sydney and takes a job in a video store, rooming with Rhonda.

All of Muriel's dreams eventually come true, but she loses what makes her special and what she has always devalued - herself.

This is such a splendid film, made all the more magnificent by the performance of one of the truly great actresses of this century, Toni Collette. Collette belongs right up there with Streep, Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchette. She's not there because she's a character actress who disappears into her roles so that she's unrecognizable from film to film. Here she embodies Muriel - overweight, badly dressed, with low self-esteem who, in the process of finding out who she is, emerges as an attractive person who knows what's important and what it is she really wants.

"Muriel's Wedding" is not a raucous comedy. It has many layers - ridiculous characters, such as her supposed vain friends, and then it turns around and gives you a complicated character like Rhonda, who loves life and lives it with complete abandon until tragedy strikes. Griffiths gives a beautiful performance. Hunter, the man we loved to hate in "Strictly Ballroom," is even more hateful here, but in the end, seems to have learned his lessons too.

Muriel learns what we all learn - life isn't what goes on on the outside, it's what happens inside. What's valuable isn't the wedding dress and all the pomp, but the souls and love involved and the real meaning of marriage. Then you're a Dancing Queen and you can really feel joy.

Such a great film, made possible by Collette and Hogan's excellent script and direction. Don't miss it.

I saw this film again after several years. Still believe is drama, a dark inner film. I never considered as a comedy. Characters are very well put on scene, that even a man can identify himself with some of the performances. Music also makes the point. ABBA is so out of fashion today, that's close to a classic.

i still remember joining the neighbors to go to the movies to see a new Australian film that noone knew much about, except that it featured the music of abba...just as i still remember walking out of the cinema aglow with such immense joy.

this is a wonderful film, that begins with a shy, needy, shrinking-violet girl and ends with a strong, honest woman aware of her own power to change and control the world around her. this film is full of laughs, full of smiles and, towards the crescendo of the last few minutes even full of tears. one can't help but want to stand up and cheer, or dance, or both, as muriel escapes everything that her 'life' has pushed on her and rides into the sunset, with such happiness radiating from her face.

"you're terrible, muriel..." she is, and you can't help but love her for it. see this movie!

It's quite a while since I'd seen Muriel's Wedding, and it remains to me a strangely satisfying film despite the inherent sadness of the plot and the unlovable nature of many of the characters and themes. To me, picking the jaunty Abba songs was a masterstroke, because it lightened the tone considerably, provided a backdrop that nearly everyone seeing the film would know and most would relate to positively.

Toni Collette demonstrated what an amazingly versatile actor she is, and the chemistry between her and Rachel Griffiths (Rhonda) to me is what makes the film. Bill Hunter (Bill Heslop) nails the awful unlovable Aussie blokey father role, which provides a rationale for how the premise of the film arose. It provides a lot of issues to think about, from the scheming local councillor Heslop, through Muriel's high school "friends" to the South African Olympic swimmer who needed an Aussie bride to become an Australian citizen and be able to leave South Africa.

It put director PJ Hogan on the map, was a box office and critical success, as well as establishing Toni Collette. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh with 3.5 stars.

For the life of me I can't understand why people love this movie. I thought it was just awful and so depressing. I can't believe anyone thought this would make a good story. It has not a single likable character except for Muriel's best friend, Rhonda. Depressing family life, hateful, shallow friends, pitiful mother, obnoxious father, it's just awful. I was expecting a light-hearted comedy and lots of laughs. It's mostly dark and depressing with only one or two scenes that really made me laugh. I can't remember the last time I've been this disappointed in a movie. I'll give it this: The acting is good and the ABBA music is lots of fun. Just don't go into it expecting a comedy or you'll be sorely disappointed.

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

A dark comedy it is but it really touches the heart and it can be quite sad at times. There are many levels that you can watch this movie on and many do say there is a superficialness to it. However, there are core human elements that clearly ring through in this movie. Friendship, compassion, empathy. Toni Colette and Rachel Griffths both make this movie stellar. It is heartbreaking at times to watch Muriel (Collette) wanting to be someone of value. Her feelings are so true to her heart and I am sure many can relate. Griffith's character is portrayed with such humor and honesty. She also has some of the funniest lines I have heard in a movie in a long time.

Please watch this! It does offer meaning and you certainly can't go wrong with the music of ABBA!

This is another kind of strange Australian movie out about this time, like "Strictly Ballroom," with good color, colorful characters and a different type of story. I believe women would like this story more than men, but it has an odd fascination to it that should attract anyone.

The major negative to the story, for me, was that the characters were not very appealing. The lead character in this "Cinderella" story is a big liar and has a stupid, immature laugh that gets grating. Her best friend turns foul-mouthed and bitter.

The movie has a good mix of comedy and drama and there are some very strong moments in here, so very dramatic ones. The soundtrack is comprised of old ABBA songs, and they sound pretty good. This is a story that makes you reflect on it. If they had nicer characters, I would have bought the VHS.

i know it's a great movie because it made me cry and i don't cry while watching any movie, of course some would say it's not a good enough movie i would say just watch it and full in love with Toni Colette and Australia as she made it the warmest place on earth. you would think it's a comedy movie or a drama but it's more than that it's a call for life and seeking freedom and real love and friends it will make you recheck your list of friends to see who are the true ones, it will make you recheck your life to make sure you'r living it right and for the right reasons and Toni oh boy she's a miracle. just watch the damn movie and you won't regret it, IT'S A MASTER PIECE

The film has a biting satiric edge to it & offers a refreshingly unsentimental, non-judgmental portrait of a young woman deemed a loser by both "friends" and family. Toni Collette is magnificent as Muriel, capturing the character's wide range of emotions, from the oblivious to the gushingly enthusiastic. Collette is solidly paired with Rachel Griffith; the two come across as long-time buddies. The open-faced surrealistic sarcasm of the film is in key places undermined by melodramatic tragedies (reminding me of the turkey "Terms of Endearment"), but at least these solemn moments are treated in an un-Hollywood, non-mawkish fashion. This is a fascinating, memorable film.

I haven't seen many Australian films, but I have always been struck by their proclivity to grotesque characterization. This film was no exception. From her careless and unfeeling father to her deliciously shallow and beautiful, popular friends, Muriel is surrounded by the ugliest of humanity. Even our heroine has elements of the grotesque about her until her eventual awakening late in the film. Muriel's friend Rhonda is the only character who lacks the touches of grotesquely, and it's no mistake that she is the character to whom Muriel learns that she can turn.

Muriel's wedding tells the story of a girl who was brought up to believe in her worthlessness. She wants nothing more than to be married to prove herself a success at life and get away from the life she's known. In the midst of all her bad decisions (and in the light of one of the most moving tragedies I've seen in a comedy or drama in a great while), Muriel comes to realize that she is going about success all wrong.

This film is wonderful and charming, a true comedy, but without the saccharin Halmark ending and obligatory romance so prominent in American movies. This is the story of a real hopeless case, who realizes she's not hopeless and has had everything she needed all along.

Muriel Heslop dreams of her wedding day as she listens to ABBA at her home in Porpoise Spit... unfortunately for her she has never had a boyfriend let alone got engaged. Muriel is fairly awkward, her 'friends' barely tolerate her and her father finds her, and her siblings, an embarrassment. One day Muriel takes advantage of a blank cheque, given to fund preparations for a new job, to have a luxury holiday. Here she meets Rhonda, a woman who got out of Porpoise Spit. She tells Rhonda that she is engaged and is unable to end that lie when she follows her to Sydney and gets a job. She doesn't give up on her dream of marriage.

On the surface this film looks as if it will be a fairly standard rom-com. It may play with some of the genre clichés but generally avoids fully giving into them. It has plenty of downbeat moments as well as some cringe inducing scenes. There are also some good laughs... sometimes during those more embarrassing scenes. Toni Collette is really impressive as Muriel and Rachael Griffiths shines as Rhonda; the rest of the cast is solid too. I liked how the film avoided many of the expected outcomes; sometimes in uplifting ways but in one case with a tragedy. The use of music, particularly ABBA songs is effective and likely to have viewers wanting to sing along. Overall I'd definitely recommend this film; it is a modern Australian classic.