YMMV / Muriel's Wedding

• Awesome Music: The scene where Muriel tries on the wedding dress for the first time featured a reworked version of "Dancing Queen".
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Chook is in a detention center, accused of raping a Japanese tourist; Tania can't believe that, since "Chook hates the Japanese!"
  • The girls' treatment of Muriel. They order her to give back the bouquet she caught at Tania's wedding - and blame her for tossing it to the woman they ordered her to toss it to - and are overall downright cruel to her throughout the film. The worst is when they ask Muriel to leave their group over dinner. Not only are they insensitive to her feelings, especially when she starts crying (and to further scold her for this reaction embarrassing them), but you can even hear some male patrons laughing at her offscreen!
• Edited for Syndication: On US television airings, the words "fuck", "shit", "dick", and "assholes" are all muted. When Muriel inadvertently changes the TV channel to porn, the shot of the TV screen is shown is shortened, and the woman's breasts are blurred out. Later in the same scene, when the two sailors run into the room naked, any shots showing their bare buttocks have them cropped out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A movie about a wedding that features several ABBA songs? Surely such a combination would never hit the big screen again.
  • Even more uncanny is the fact that the poster and soundtrack cover, featuring a smiling Muriel in a wedding dress looking up to the sky with her eyes closed, looks almost identical to the poster for the Mamma Mia! stage musical, which would premiere four and a half years after Muriel's Wedding.
  • Muriel's Wedding itself would end up getting a stage musical adaptation in 2017, which features multiple ABBA songs, some of which were not featured in the film.
• Hollywood Homely: Toni Collette reportedly put on 40 pounds in 7 weeks with the help of a dietitian in order to play the role of Muriel, and unflattering wardrobe and make-up were used to give her a more homely look. As always, however, your mileage may vary.
• Memetic Mutation: "You're terrible, Muriel." would go on to be quoted by Australians for years to come.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Muriel's first two breakdowns: the first time occurs when her "friends" kick her out of their group and the second time happens in the bridal shop after Rhonda confronts her. Even though her deception during the latter incident was wrong, you can sympathize with her over having a verbally abusive father, being rejected by her awful "friends" and believing that no one will ever love her.
  • Muriel's mother arrives late to the wedding and is stood in the back, Muriel walks directly past without seeing her mother who starts to cry. Cue tissues.
  • The suicide of Muriel's mother, especially when Muriel later flips through her photo album.
    • A minor, but important thing to note about this, but after her mother's funeral, Muriel starts to cry for the third time and her then-husband David comforts her. The previous two breakdowns, as mentioned above, had her crying out of selfish motives, especially the second time the bridal shop. The first time can even come across as somewhat over-the-top and hammy ugly-crying. However, the third time this happens marks the first time this is played completely straight. And it's not loud or obnoxious either: it's quiet sobbing out of genuine sorrow and regret.
• The Woobie: Where to begin?
  • Muriel has some shades of being a woman child, but she's overwhelmingly a sympathetic misfit character, being bullied by her "friends," publicly humiliated and emotionally abused by her father, and desperate to change herself by getting married.
  • Muriel's mother Betty. Her husband's pretty obviously cheating on her, almost all of her children are jobless layabouts, her husband blames her and the family for his political failures, her own daughter admits to using her to steal money, she's late to said daughter's wedding and breaks into tears when Muriel walks past her... Then she's caught shoplifting and humiliated, her husband abandons her for his mistress, and she commits suicide after her son calls her a "mad bitch." Poor Betty.
  • On a lesser note, Muriel's first boyfriend, Brice. He clearly likes Muriel, but his attempts to deflower her don't go over well, as Rhonda's sailor friends misinterpret Muriel's screaming laughter as screams and restrain him. Then he's invited to Muriel's wedding and clearly looks disappointed. He is the only one in the crowd that does not applaud.
  • Rhonda. She's vivacious and bold, encouraging Muriel to see the best within herself and live life; but then she gets cancer and loses the ability to walk, then her friend ditches her for a sham marriage, her mother is controlling, and she's forced to hang around the same girls she hated in high school.

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