Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Muriel's Wedding is one of those films for the downtrodden, the rejects, the less than attractive members of the student body, the ones who never amount to anything. It is for the Muriels who would rather be Mariel, pretty and famous and successful. Do we know how much of Muriel's failures are a result of her neglectful and emotionally abusive upbringing at the hands of her prideful father? P.J. Hogan never gives us a straight answer - it isn't nearly as easy or simple in real life. What is rather wonderful is an early Toni Collete's blossoming performance. She is one of those people where you can almost make out the scars of acne (not quite literally), braces and bullying of high school. Before the glamour and acclaim there was this girl, the slightly chubby underachiever who sloppily applies too much red lipstick and has carved out a happy place comprised entirely of ABBA songs. And Collete's performance is so painfully naive and oblivious that even as she gets soullessly married for money and prestige she has a huge grin on her face. It's big enough to ignore her mother. The great thing about Muriel's Wedding is that it takes its story to that expected end - the high powered couple, the glamour wedding, the middle finger to the high school bullies. But it also realises and accepts that this isn't something that Muriel is fit for at all. There is the crazy, pixie-haired punk Rhonda whom has actually broken out of the mould in a much more natural and independent way - she has the intelligence to know that high school doesn't really matter anyway, and that long held grudges and deep-seated desires to one-up those bullies and prove you are better than them are silly in the end. She mouths them off in the reunion, but it's not some defining, cathartic moment it would be for Muriel. It is billed first as an offbeat comedy - and it is funny too, maybe funnier for the non-Australian audiences who will relish the way these characters cruelly and frankly cut straight to the chase, and the heavy, outrageous accents which do not give away a hint of sympathy or false pretense. But it is also dark in some spots, and painfully real. Muriel's father has long aspired to run for government, and bullied his children for never ever reaching his (rather mediocre high) achievements. We see how this has been internalised and normalised; after cruelly announcing his divorce and lamenting his shambles of a family, Betty lets off an agonising "STOP DISAPPOINTING YOUR FATHER" because she has been trained so diligently to deflect the blame away from her husband. Admittedly it does take a few wrong turns in getting there. The whole Van Arkle Olympics plot is pretty ludicrous and it takes a horrid sex scene for Muriel to actually come to her senses and for him to... fall in love with her? The whole tone of broaching that physical barrier is pretty ridiculous in fact; Muriel doesn't really know how to react when a boy actually shows her attention, so she bursts out in laughter while making out and in a rather crass bit of comedy, shrieks at her first sighting of a penis. But of course this sort of stuff comes with the package. You reap what you sow. And Muriel's Wedding recognises that a big, lavish wedding may indeed not always be the solution or the path to the happy ending.

If you are looking for a fantasy movie then this is it, base mostly in Australia this movie will take you on an adventure. A young lady loving ABBA tries to find her dream wedding, problem is she has never had a date or really good friends.she deals with love, dreams, family, heart break and friends problems a long the way,she moves to the city with her best friend to change her life, when she is in the city she has a job, a home and she finds a guy she likes but that isn't the end of it at all, she will do anything to have a dream wedding. Throughout this movie there will be lots of laughs and some tears. Personally it is one of the best 1994 movie I have seen in a while, grab your best friends this movie some food for a night of laughter.

One of the better chick flicks out there… I first saw part of this movie when I was little and was so intrigued… it wasn't until later when I looked it up that I realized that it was Toni, also known as Tara of United States of Tara… I love her as an actress and this film just brings out her naively dopey side. Though, most might find her character annoying she's just so lovely.This movie follows Muriel a lower than average girl who believes that getting married will complete her life. She takes her family's saving to start her life in Sydney while living with her friend. There's a lot of mishaps among a variety of things that happens when her dreams come true. But Muriel is smarter than we give her credit from in the beginning.For the outcast in all of us who do not have a hidden talent, who are just the way we are… I believe that this takes a semi-realistic look at how life goes, even when you get hit with the strike of lightening. One of the better chick flicks out there for certain.

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