Netflix It! Muriel's Wedding: Movie, DVD Review (2009)

Editor's Note: Netflix It is a feature meant to draw attention to older films some readers might have missed, and might consider either adding to their Netflix queue, or renting at their local DVD store. The following review of "Muriel's Wedding," never published here before, is the original 1997 review.


Directed by P.J. Hogan, 105 minutes, rated R.

In Porpoise Spit, Australia, awkward, insecure and big-boned Muriel (Toni Collette), clad in a cheap, stolen leopard-skin dress and wearing too much makeup, catches the bouquet at a beautiful friend’s wedding--and is immediately chastised by a group of outraged, equally beautiful women. “Throw it again!” they shout at Muriel. “You’ll never get married!”

Such is the plight for poor, misguided Muriel, who has no self-confidence, no prospects for a good job, and finds her sole inspiration not in her family, her friends or in her dreams, but in songs by ABBA. “I want my life to be as good as an ABBA song,” she says to herself in her bedroom mirror. “I want it to be as good as ‘Dancing Queen.’”

To achieve this unique sort of retro-nirvana, Muriel believes she must be rid of her family, which includes her tragic, over-worked mother, Betty (Jeanie Drynan), her cruel, failure of a father, Bill (Bill Hunter), and her siblings, who spend their days staring at the television in stunned, wide-eyed wonderment.

To be truly happy, Muriel also believes she must be married--only then will she be complete. Thus, when she suddenly comes into some money (which she steals), she flees her depressing, meager beginnings in the hick town of Porpoise Spit and takes flight to the glamorous lights of Sydney, where she gets a job at a video store, changes her name to Mariel, and tries to become someone she isn’t in order to catch her man.

Poor Muriel. Over and over again, she watches on video the ornate and trumpeted marriage of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, but she doesn’t seem willing--or able--to remember that that marriage ended with Charles having an affair, the queen calling the whole thing off, and Diana desperately unhappy. Muriel, who has no self worth, sees only the romance of Diana’s Cinderella-like marriage, and believes that if she too can find a prince to marry her, her shapeless life will suddenly take form and at last have meaning.

Her obsession with marriage is explored when she starts frequenting wedding boutiques, lying to the sales people in an effort to be fitted for wedding gowns, and leaving with Polaroid pictures of herself in full wedding regalia. Eventually, she does find a wealthy South African swimmer who needs a wife to get an Australian passport, but finds that marriage with him--or with anybody she doesn’t truly love--is worthless and certainly no key to happiness.

Take comfort. By film’s end, Muriel does come into her own, and eventually chooses to live her life with all the fun and all the dignity of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

Grade: A-