I have revisited this after many years, remembering kind of liking it but kind of not, and I can see why.
Muriel (Toni Collette) is a social outcast - bullied, unpopular, overweight, poor dress sense, unemployed, and desperate to get married as a means of escape. To her, marriage, or more specifically, the wedding, is the be all and end all. Muriel has low self esteem, not helped by an overbearing, cruel father and depressed mother. Muriel is also a compulsive liar.
It's easy to sympathise with Muriel to a point. Her mother has enabled the learned helplessness in all the kids, her father has bullied them all, and her failures have been publicly highlighted and mocked by him, along with her hapless siblings, all equally disappointing to him. He is a corrupt, self congratulating and slimy politician, carrying out a blatant affair right in front of them all.
But Muriel makes the worst possible choices, over and over again, to try to solve her problems. Instead of sticking at any job, she quits. Instead of walking away from her bullying non-friends who have viciously cast her out, she follows them to an island holiday, stealing her parent's life savings to do it, and taking advantage of her mentally ill mother's vulnerability and naïveté by encouraging her to write her blank cheques. She dumps her one and only friend after she's confined to a wheelchair to enter into a Green Card marriage with a South African swimmer for money (but more for the wedding). She heartbreakingly snubs her mother at that wedding. She lies all the time.
It's hard to like Muriel. Muriel is a selfish self centred and unsympathetic character, whose lies just trip off her tongue to everyone she meets. Even when her mother commits suicide, after a series of events not unconnected to Muriel's own actions, she cries not for her mother, but for herself.
When her father is left picking up the pieces (and to be fair he does deserve a fair amount of comeuppance), she leaves them all to it and rides off into the sunset with her friend, who bafflingly forgives her despite no apology.
So yes, I can see why it stuck in my craw all those years ago. There are some wonderful moments - the Waterloo routine with the cat fight in the background, and the wonderful bean bag date scene. However, the darkness around Muriel as heroine is hard to overlook and even by the end she hasn't fully redeemed herself in my eyes.
Muriel (Toni Collette) is a social outcast - bullied, unpopular, overweight, poor dress sense, unemployed, and desperate to get married as a means of escape. To her, marriage, or more specifically, the wedding, is the be all and end all. Muriel has low self esteem, not helped by an overbearing, cruel father and depressed mother. Muriel is also a compulsive liar.
It's easy to sympathise with Muriel to a point. Her mother has enabled the learned helplessness in all the kids, her father has bullied them all, and her failures have been publicly highlighted and mocked by him, along with her hapless siblings, all equally disappointing to him. He is a corrupt, self congratulating and slimy politician, carrying out a blatant affair right in front of them all.
But Muriel makes the worst possible choices, over and over again, to try to solve her problems. Instead of sticking at any job, she quits. Instead of walking away from her bullying non-friends who have viciously cast her out, she follows them to an island holiday, stealing her parent's life savings to do it, and taking advantage of her mentally ill mother's vulnerability and naïveté by encouraging her to write her blank cheques. She dumps her one and only friend after she's confined to a wheelchair to enter into a Green Card marriage with a South African swimmer for money (but more for the wedding). She heartbreakingly snubs her mother at that wedding. She lies all the time.
It's hard to like Muriel. Muriel is a selfish self centred and unsympathetic character, whose lies just trip off her tongue to everyone she meets. Even when her mother commits suicide, after a series of events not unconnected to Muriel's own actions, she cries not for her mother, but for herself.
When her father is left picking up the pieces (and to be fair he does deserve a fair amount of comeuppance), she leaves them all to it and rides off into the sunset with her friend, who bafflingly forgives her despite no apology.
So yes, I can see why it stuck in my craw all those years ago. There are some wonderful moments - the Waterloo routine with the cat fight in the background, and the wonderful bean bag date scene. However, the darkness around Muriel as heroine is hard to overlook and even by the end she hasn't fully redeemed herself in my eyes.