MURIEL'S WEDDING
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Toni Collette, Bill Hunter, Rachel Griffiths, Daniel LaPaine, Jeanie Drynan, Sophie Lee. Screenplay/Director: P. J. Hogan.
MURIEL'S WEDDING presents me with a critical poser: what do you do with a movie when there was only one thing about a movie that you liked, but you liked that one thing a *lot*? I mean, *really* liked it a lot. MURIEL'S WEDDING is a truly disjointed effort, bouncing from slapstick comedy to depressing domestic drama, but its lead character is a marvelous creation, played with love and sensitivity by Toni Collette. I was always interested in what might happen to her, but I was frequently disappointed by what happened around her. Does that one great piece outweigh all the other less effective pieces? In a word, yes...but just barely.
Toni Collette plays Muriel Heslop, a homely, unemployed 22-year-old living in the seaside Australian community of Porpoise Spit. Muriel is obsessed with the idea of being married, convinced that it will separate her from her layabout family and mean that she has become a success. She sees an opportunity in a blank check, and steals several thousand dollars from her father (Bill Hunter), a pompous local politician, to take a luxurious island holiday. There Muriel runs into Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), an old schoolmate with a zest for life. The two become fast friends, and move to Sydney together, but marriage is still foremost in Muriel's mind. When an opportunity does present itself, it forces Muriel to consider her priorities carefully.
Here is what is right with MURIEL'S WEDDING: Toni Collette, who walks the fine line between making Muriel sympathetic and making her pathetic. Collette gained over 40 pounds to play the dumpy Muriel, but to her eternal credit she plays against Muriel's physical appearance, letting the audience see the swan behind the ugly duckling. She does the most with her expressive mouth, as her bouts of giddiness cause her to burst into a huge toothy smile, frequently with her tongue stuck out through them. Her performance is by turns hilarious (her hysterical reaction to a date attempting to remove her clothes) and touching (her wistful sing-alongs to ABBA's "Dancing Queen"). It is a marvelous piece of work, made all the more impressive because she never tries to inject any irony into Muriel's decidedly un-liberated dreams.
Here is what is wrong with MURIEL'S WEDDING: Muriel is stuck in an episodic story which doesn't add up to all that much. The sequences at the Hibiscus Island resort are pure raucous comedy, highlighted by Collette and Rachel Griffiths (a dead ringer for Juliette Lewis as Rhonda) doing a lip-synch performance of ABBA's "Waterloo." Then the switch to Sydney brings a tragic turn which seems really inappropriate, followed by a bride-for-hire section again focused on comedy. Finally, there is yet another tragedy, and a decision by Muriel for which the justification doesn't seem quite right. It is often difficult to get caught up in Muriel's story, because it takes so many detours.
She is also surrounded by characters who are mostly paper-thin by comparison. Griffiths has some nice moments as the brassy Rhonda, and Jeanie Dryden has a couple of heart-breaking scenes as Muriel's beaten-down-by-life mother. But Bill Hunter is merely loud and slightly oily as Muriel's father, and Sophie Lee leads a group of stereotypically catty Barbie dolls who snub Muriel. There is also a strange bit by Matt Day as the young man who pines for Muriel then disappears from the story. I can understand the attraction--Muriel is a splendidly crafted character, acted with a grace that made me care about her life. She deserved something more cohesive than this jittery wedding.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 dancing queens: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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