Working in a movie theater was a perfect part-time job for this teenage cinephile. Free movies, free popcorn, free soda. And one of those movies was Muriel’s Wedding, which I took my entire family to see.
The movie opens up with our protagonist, Muriel, catching the bouquet at a friend’s wedding. Almost immediately, one of her other friends says, “Throw it back! You’ll never get married!” Regina George of Mean Girls has nothing on these “friends” of Muriel’s, who soon kick her out of their group because they’re going to a tropical island on holiday, and they deduce Muriel will bring down their marriage.
Her friends are blonde b*tches, and Muriel isn’t attractive in a conventional sense. Her family life isn’t much better; her father browbeats the entire family, who spend most of the day staring at the “idiot box.” Muriel copes by retreating into her room in times of distress and playing ABBA songs (a nice plus of this film was that it introduced me to some good tunes by this duo).
One day, after her father gets her a job selling cosmetics and her mother writes her a blank check to buy needed materials, Muriel follows her former friends to Hibiscus Island and runs into Rhonda, an old acquaintance from high school, high-spirited and more than likely a Single at Heart. The sequence where they lip-sync to “Waterloo” in a talent show is a blast, especially when cross-cut with two of the mean girls fighting over a “stolen man.”
From there, Muriel moves out of her little town of Porpoise Spit, Australia into the urban metropolis of Sydney, where she finds her own job and has her first sexual encounter with a guy she meets there (it’s more humorous than erotic). But she’s not fully happy because…she’s not married!
Many people have been conditioned to this idea that marriage = happiness, but Muriel really takes it to an extreme, trying on wedding dresses at various shops and inventing a fiancé. The social conditioning runs deep in this one. When she finally admits her deception to Rhonda, it’s cathartic. But Muriel looks through the personals (the 1990s version of Tinder) and meets up with David, a South African swimming star, who’s only looking to get married so he can get an Australian passport. Muriel appears thrilled with this; she just wants the wedding and the husband, and she’s getting paid for the ruse. These feelings are not reciprocated by David, who anxiously asks his coach, “Is the blonde still available?” And after the proposal, we see another retreat by Muriel into her room, where she plays “Dancing Queen” on repeat.
Since David is an Olympic contender, this marriage gets all kinds of media hype. Her family supports him, and the Mean Girls even come back. And Muriel and Rhonda (now wheelchair-bound due to cancer) have the kind of falling out typically reserved for romcoms.
Fortunately, Muriel comes to her senses, and it turns out David isn’t such a bad guy. He agrees to a divorce and still pays Muriel. And Muriel finally takes the lead in their relationship, bringing Rhonda back to Sydney from her overbearing mother and the Mean Girls, who've befriended Rhonda because it's "good for their image."