MURIEL'S WEDDING is about as confusing a movie as a viewer can get.

It was originally marketed as a comedy, with Toni Colette (of THE SIXTH SENSE fame) in the role of Muriel, a dowdy frump that apparently can't even get arrested. She is simply that unpopular - so unpopular, in fact, that all of her attempts to court the favor of the snobbish popular girls of Porpoise Spit are exercises in futility. Not only is she unpopular, she can't tell the truth to save her life, nor can she support herself at any worthwhile enterprise.

Eventually, Muriel steals some money from her mother and takes off on vacation. She feels so guilty that she moves away from home and gets her very first legitimate job at a video store. Along the way, she picks up a genuine friend, Rhonda (played by Rachel Griffiths), and a suitor so in love with her that he follows her to where he doesn't belong.

She then meets a young man who needs an Australian passport so he can compete in the Olympics. Muriel becomes his excuse to obtain that passport, by way of marriage, so she gets the white wedding she has dreamed of since her Porpoise Spit days.

At this point, the snobby popular girls become very interested in being Muriel's friends, giving Muriel the opportunity to find out that these gals are so shallow you wouldn't be able to fill a kiddie pool with them. Therefore, neither her friendships with these snobs nor her marriage to the athlete last.

Frankly, I wondered why the marketing geeks pitched this as a romantic comedy with an Abba soundrack (Muriel was an ABBA fan). The themes of this movie - acceptance, love, marriage, friendship - are timeless, and have fueled the classic movies of the 20th Century. One is led to believe, in fact, that one is to watch an Australian version of MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, if one took the advertising at all seriously. I was led to believe that the wedding was celebrating the marriage of Muriel to a man who loved her dearly, surrounded by all their friends, ending in "they lived comically ever after."

The truth is that this is one sad movie. The problem with the movie is the way in which Muriel herself is written; she isn't even as sympathetic as Colette's character in THE SIXTH SENSE. Multiple depressing sequences - from the opening sequences, in which one learns of Muriel's spotty vocational and personal history, all the way through to the end - dot this movie.

I felt lied to, frankly. Had this even been a decent drama, I could have lived with that, remaining upset and cheated only by the lousy marketing job done for this movie. But it was a complete waste of my time, largely because of a subjective sense that this movie was unfocused and did not live up to its promise.

I wish I could be more specific, but I can't. There isn't anything I can specifically point to, just that the overall feel of the movie was very poor. I wouldn't recommend renting it.

Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: None of the Above