Muriel's Wedding

by

Various Artists

Edit

A fine souvenir of a terrific film and an excellent sampler in its own right, even though it doesn't fully capture the film's moving soundtrack experience. Having seen the film a few times, I still don't recall the Carpenters and Dusty Springfield tunes being there (oh ... "music inspired by", I see), but they're good songs nonetheless. The Rubette track (a 1974 UK smash) is much appreciated and the orchestral version of "Dancing Queen" demonstrates how well Abba's music holds up in other contexts. The film was chock full of Abba songs, though only three found their way to this disc ("Fernando" and "Mamma Mia" are among the film-significant tunes missing), but I guess they didn't want to make this an Abba Greatest Hits CD. Still in all one of the better and more evocative soundtrack CDs of recent years.

Muriel's Wedding is set in Australia, with Australian actors and Australian social mores. The movie has some upbeat moments and we are happy at the end that Muriel is converted from what her father dooms her to be, to what her wonderful self realizes after many not-too-helpful detours. What i would add as a note of caution for family viewers this movie has some very explicit sexual references and one scene at the beginning that would have been better left out. It could been a thoroughly edifying movie, despite some of the dysfunctions involved but unfortunately, because of the R-rated material, it fell short of its potential.