Muriel’s Wedding (1993)

Muriel’s Wedding: 1993, dir. P.J. Hogan. Seen on DVD (Oct. 31).
Unfortunately, this movie caused a new agreement about DVD rentals to be established in our household, especially since I saw it not long after renting Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
The agreement: No more watching movies with ABBA in the soundtrack when my boyfriend is home. It shatters his poor delicate nerves. He has to play a lot of Warren Zevon and John Hiatt afterwards to recuperate.
Fortunately, I really liked Muriel’s Wedding even with the ABBA music. I am not the world’s biggest ABBA fan myself, but I felt the music was very appropriately used in this movie.
I am not the world’s biggest fan of “chick flicks,” either, and I didn’t even think of this movie as a chick flick until it was pointed out to me. (When I am queen of the universe, we will use the term “chick flick” to describe movies in which women kick some serious ass, and there will be many fine movies made in this particular genre. Movies where women sit around the table eating cheesecake until they bond and then start dancing to Motown hits will face my fiery wrath.) This was such a lovely little movie that I didn’t notice it’s chick-flick-ish-ness.

Or maybe it just hit home for me in a very personal way, in a way that most female-oriented melodramas and gentle comedies do not. While I have never entertained any elaborate bridal fantasies (read this entry to learn how I view weddings), I was terribly sympathetic with Muriel. I think what did it was the way her father treated her. He constantly told her, and everyone around her, what a failure she was, and a disappointment, and a horrible person, and a clumsy cow, and so forth. My dad would never act like that, but he did have his moments when his temper flared (in private), so the abuse Muriel suffered definitely struck a chord for me.
Yeah, okay, maybe I even cried a little. Shut UP. I didn’t make fun of you when you cried during those superficial manipulative cliched melodramas like Titanic and Love Story and Shadowland, did I? Oh. I did, didn’t I. Well, this is a well-written and well-made movie that didn’t resort to tricks and overblown music to draw emotion, so there.
Also, we don’t have nearly enough charming normal-sized or large-ish heroines in movies. I think Toni Collette looks great in Muriel’s Wedding and later in Emma and she looks like some kind of gaunt ill creature now, although I’m told she put on weight for this movie and is naturally skinny. I liked Minnie Driver better when she wasn’t overly bony, too. Jeneane Garafalo, I don’t even want to think about right now. Kate Winslet isn’t skinny and she always looks enchanting.
Toni Collette is perfect in this movie, very believable. I can’t imagine acting the way she does, particularly with the wedding obsession, but I understood why she did it. The rest of the cast was also excellent, particularly Rachel Griffiths, playing Muriel’s friend Rhonda.
I rented this movie because someone suggested I might like it a lot better than Napoleon Dynamite—that all the parts of that movie I found insincere, shallow, and stereotyped were done beautifully in Muriel’s Wedding. Adina, you were absolutely right. Thank you very much for prodding me into finally seeing this movie.
In fact, I will confess that I liked Muriel’s Wedding enough to want to own the DVD. My boyfriend, as he reads this, is probably hoping the DVD is out of print. Poor thing. Don’t worry, honey, I will keep you far away from the scary ABBA music.