Muriel's Wedding

Muriel's Wedding is a 1994 Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by P. J. Hogan. The film, which stars actors Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Jeanie Drynan, Sophie Lee, and Bill Hunter, focuses on the socially awkward Muriel whose ambition is to have a glamorous wedding and improve her personal life by moving from her dead-end home town, the fictional Porpoise Spit, to Sydney.

The film received multiple award nominations, including a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (Collette).

Plot

A socially awkward, overweight, naïve "ugly duckling", who is obsessed with the music of ABBA, Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette) is the target of ridicule by the more fashion-conscious girls she considers her friends. She also is a perpetual daydreamer who yearns for a glamorous wedding and marriage to a man who will help get her out of the fictional dead end seaside town of Porpoise Spit, Queensland, improve her personal life, and free her from a tedious life dominated by her demanding and often psychologically abusive father Bill (Bill Hunter), a corrupt politician who verbally lashes out at his subservient wife Betty and their unambitious children at every opportunity. In high School she was shy and socially awkward, but managed somehow to have the "in group" accept her hanging around them. Muriel attends the wedding of one her high school associates in an inappropriate leopard print dress. After witnessing the groom having sex with one of the bridesmaids, Muriel is arrested because by some strange coincidence the store detective from where she shop-lifted was also at the wedding.