Muriel's Wedding (1995)

Film: Muriel's Wedding (1995)
Stars: Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, Gennie Nevinson, Daniel Lapaine
Director: P.J. Hogan
Oscar History: No nominations, but it was clearly close-it got BAFTA and WGA nominated for its screenplay and Toni Collette nabbed a surprise Best Actress nomination at the Golden Globes.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of P.J. Hogan consistently defy expectations.  Who would have, for example, cast Julia Roberts as a husband-stealing vixen in My Best Friend's Wedding rather than as the eventual romantic victor?  And who could have retold the story of Neverland just as well as J.M. Barrie in one of the most underrated films I've ever seen, his magnum opus Peter Pan?  So I went into Muriel's Wedding knowing the cleverness of Mr. Hogan, and yet still found the unexpected.

Muriel's Wedding is the tale of one Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette), a girl who has lost her way in life.  She sits around, listening to ABBA songs and being the brunt of the jokes from her "friends" and daydreaming about her perfect wedding.  Anyone who has been single past the age of about 25 knows that there are days when you feel just like Muriel-wondering where exactly your life is headed and willing to do just about anything to make it look like you dreamed it would at fifteen.  After being dumped by her so-called friends, she steals several thousand dollars from her parents and goes on a vacation, where she runs into an old classmate named Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), a firecracker who likes Muriel and doesn't give a crap about anyone's opinion of her.  She tells off the frenemies and they start an adventure together.

Here's where the realism of P.J. Hogan takes place.  In a traditional, more studio-centric storyline, we'd see Muriel fall for some hard-on-his-luck guy and eventually learn that she can stand-up to her high school mean girls.  However, Hogan decides to throw us two loopholes-one is that Griffiths character has cancer, and eventually has to have surgery which will sever her spine, making it impossible for her to walk again.  Secondly, we find that Muriel will indeed get her wedding, though not as she had ever planned-she becomes a green-card bride, marrying a blond swimming Adonis and essentially abandoning her newfound sense of self in favor of what she had always dreamed of-that big white, Princess Diana gown and the man of her dreams and the mean girl bridesmaids envying her.  Though it doesn't qualify as a twist, it's interesting, because, let's face it, this is how real life would work.  In real life, we get very tunnel vision-y about our goals and dreams, and are willing to take a facsimile if the perfect vision doesn't come to fruition.

It's in this storyline that Toni Collette, a Grade-A actress who has not always gotten the opportunities to shine, excels.  Collette doesn't play Muriel as a saint, or as unselfish, or as any of the stock character traits we expect from the quiet, picked-on wallflowers we so often see transformed by throwing away their glasses.  She's greedy, and silly, and willing to lie to get her end goals.  Her wedding shop confessional, where she confesses to Griffiths that she just wants to get married, that's all she ever wanted, is such a real depiction of those desperate moments in single life that as a viewer you half wish that this wasn't a comedy so it would stay and explore that not-often-discussed more melancholy part of your twenties.  However, you know that even in the capable hands of P.J. Hogan, we'll still be getting some version of the happy ending because that would be too dark for a film this seemingly light.  Collette is playing an imperfect version of many of us, who want so desperately to have that perfect wedding or perfect house or perfect job that we've forgotten the "why" behind why we wanted those things in the first place.

The film gets off its rails after that wedding a bit, and mostly because I don't think that the film stays true to the characters, particularly Muriel.  Collette is still sublime, but her decisions to abandon her faux husband just as soon as he starts showing an interest in her seems to ring very hollow to the nature of her character; it's a sweet depiction of what we wish we would do in that situation (abandon our dreams to be better, truer people), but I don't think it's in accordance to the darker places which the script was illuminating so well in the film's middle.  We get to see Muriel reunited with Rhonda, but even then she can't tell off her mean girl friends-it's selective backbone for her character, and I think a bit of an easy out for the daring Hogan.


That being said, I have to say I enjoyed it, even if I couldn't love it because it didn't stay true to its nature.  Collette was four years out from enjoying international stardom with her Oscar-nominated performance as Lynn Sear, and yet, at a mere 22, she showed the womanly acting ability that would carry her through films like The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, and Little Miss Sunshine.  Griffiths is also fine, and would later enjoy a surprise Oscar nomination for her work in Hilary and Jackie (but would eventually give my favorite of her performances on television, rather than film, in Brothers & Sisters).  The actual dialogue is a down under treat (there's a reason that script was cited so frequently by precursors).  But I can't help feeling that, had Hogan had more films under his belt, he may have taken the film to the darker places it hints at, but never seems to venture into full throttle.