Muriel's Wedding: Was Rhonda punished for being spit roasted by two American sailors?

No, they just needed something tragic to happen.

It felt like it happened then to show what a dramatic shift it was. They made it out of Porpoise Spit and were living it up in the big city, going out having fun, getting laid etc, and then it all changed.

If they had just been sitting there watching TV and her back gave out it would have been dull.

Cancer ? I thought she broke her spine

That part really confused me when I first saw it. I thought she got hurt from being fucked up the ass.

It was cancer on her spine.

OP? Please stop punishing us with these awful threads and go get spit roasted, ffs.

You’re awful, r4!

Ever since I saw this as a teenager who was just beginning to bottom, this scene planted a nagging seed in my head that getting fucked too hard would leave me paralyzed.

"Planting a nagging seed". What a visual. You really are tormented by the hellish potential of bottoming.

I thought they always treated Rhonda’s character in a celebratory way, not a judgmental one. Getting spit roasted contrasts with the tragedy that comes after, the good parts of her life going to shit.

R8, there’s a douche for that.

Did Muriel have to lift Rhonda onto the toilet whenever she had to go and then wipe her ass after a stinky poo? She should have stayed married to the hot swimmer.

True story: I was once a member of "Video Drama", the (very real) Sydney video store where Muriel worked. They had a framed poster for the film on the wall signed by Toni, "Thanks for letting me work here".

Drag name: Porpoise Spit-Roasted

“You really are tormented by the hellish potential of bottoming.”

Wait. Let her finish her Orgasm.

It was Muriel's sister that stole my heart.

[quote]Was Rhonda punished for being spit roasted by two American sailors?

She just wanted her night to feel like an Abba song!

My two favorite scenes are when Rhonda tells the bitchy girls 'I'm with Muriel' and Rhonda and Muriel doing the ABBA performance while the girls are fighting.

I still say "You're terrible Muriel", yes I am lame.

The actress who played the mom was considered a major sex symbol in the 70s.

I wish they'd done a sequel.

The actresses who played the mean girls were great too.

According to this article, Pippa Grandison who played Nicole (the one who sucked Chook’s dick!) played Muriel’s mom in a stage production of the film. She also has a supporting role in “Frayed”, an Australian comedy currently on HBO Max, and she’s very funny in it.

The mean girl in the middle, Sophie Lee, was at the time very famous in Australia as a TV star. She married extremely well and quit acting.

Muriel should have gotten cancer for how she treated her family. The mother was very tragic.

Deidre Chambers was to blame for that tragedy, more than Muriel.

She was a lucky bitch up until that happened. I've been in group situations before, but never with members of the military. Mmmmm.

It was a good movie and funny and recognisable as an Australian in some ways, but it was also kind of a downer. I much prefer The Castle as an Australian film.

The Castle is a monument to outer suburban heterosexuality.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Deidre, what a coincidence!

Beautiful house, needs to be properly decorated.

A house in Bronte? Selling that will mean she never has to work another day in her life.

Wow, Sophie looks great. I would have thought she’d go the botoxed, Real Housewife route.

[quote]Deidre, what a coincidence!

It's Dierdre CHAMBERS, what a coincidence!

It doesn't work without the Chambers.

Sophie snagged herself a hot husband.

Not hot at all but probably loaded.

I suspect that our very own Muriel, Datalounge's Muriel, is named after Muriel from Muriel's wedding. Maybe that's just me projecting my love for the film and especially Toni Collette's performance. Toni goes so easily from giggles to tears and back again to giggling that I was floored by her performance when I fist watched the movie. And since Priscilla probably got out at the same time (95-ish?), I thought back then that the Ozzie film industry was so much better than Hollywood's flicks at the time. So yeah, I think our Muriel is named after Muriel's Wedding Muriel.

You’re terrible, OP. Look up the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Sophie Lee's husband has such big eyes in R33's pic that he looks like a fucking cartoon character. Very endearing.

I'm a BEAUTY consultant!

I saw Muriel's Wedding at least ten times in that theatre on Los Feliz. Really helped a young gayling during some dark times.

You need to find someone on your own level. Like I found Chook? He’s up on my level?

I can quote that with a perfect Australian accent.

This thread is MY PEOPLE. I can quote this movie front to end, all with the accents of course. It's a perfect film.

"They've accused him of raping a Japanese tourist which is ridiculous. Chook HATES the Japanese."

I remember seeing a play in the 1990s about a family where the adult daughter is pregnant and they've somehow invented a test to see if the child will be gay. The daughter decides to abort the baby (over the protests of her gay brother) when it turns out to be gay, but the abortion is botched and she winds up being unable to have children.

I kept expecting the voice of God to boom from the loudspeakers saying, "I have punished thee!"

Cher has said her favourite movie is Muriel's Wedding

Well, she certainly wasn’t much of a floozy after that night, so one might say she was cured of that affliction only when burdened with another.

They show Rhonda hitting on the taxi guy not long after getting cancer, so I don't think she's judged too much - she's still herself, although she goes through a little bit of a spiral.

[quote]"They've accused him of raping a Japanese tourist which is ridiculous. Chook HATES the Japanese."

Not a more Aussie line will you find.

I always assumed they were saying “Chuck” but their accent made it sound like “Chook”. But it actually IS “Chook”!

Fucking Deidre Chambers!

I thought it was "Chalk".

[quote]I remember seeing a play in the 1990s about a family where the adult daughter is pregnant and they've somehow invented a test to see if the child will be gay. The daughter decides to abort the baby (over the protests of her gay brother) when it turns out to be gay, but the abortion is botched and she winds up being unable to have children.

Wasn't that Twilight Of The Golds with Brendan Fraser as the gay brother? Except in the movie the Jennifer Beals had the gay baby. Faye Dunaway was the mother.

R35, that WAS a good time for Australian comedies. Strictly Ballroom came out around then too I think.

My favourite Australian movies of the 90s.

Flirting (1991)

Proof (1991)

Strictly Ballroom (1992)

The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert (1994)

Muriel's Wedding (1994)

The Sum Of Us (1994)

Love And Other Catastrophes (1996)

Oscar & Lucinda (1997)

Welcome To Woop Woop (1997)

Head On (1998)

Strange Planet (1999)

Muriel and Priscilla made it big in french cinemas, I remember my sister's in laws gifting my parents with the dvd of Priscilla because they thought it was a very good movie. It made it even through different generations.

If disease was a punishment then Mariel....I mean, Muriel would have been punished for riding the hot swimmer's dick.

We need a spiritual successor to Muriel’s Wedding... heavily featuring the music of The Vengaboys

Meghan's Wedding - why isn't it already in production?

The actor who played the swimmer did an impressive Afrikaner accent.

"If disease was a punishment then Mariel....I mean, Muriel would have been punished for riding the hot swimmer's dick."

But Muriel didn't get to ride the hot swimmer's dick until nearly the end of the movie, when she had realized what a selfish bitch she was, had decided to divorce him and was trying to become a better person. The hot swimmer avoided her like the plague up until then.

Swimmer dick was def a reward

Goddamn that actor was HOTNESS

That moment when the music starts playing in the church was fucking hilarious. The look on his face and everyone's face was brilliant.

The actor who played the swimmer was Daniel Lapaine and Jesus fuck was he gorgeous.

[quote] Jesus fuck was he gorgeous.

Jesus fuck, yes, he has aged just like everyone else on the planet.

His brief career faded into domesticity in a town called Brisbane,

r60, that is so tragic. Being only 50 and looking like that, despite being so good looking when he was younger. That makes me sad. I wish I had not seen the photo.

[quote] looking like that

That's what happens when you get married and start producing babies.

And you have to get a mortgage to pay for accommodation to get them secure in a school.

And the wife starts nagging you take a safe job instead of gallivanting across the planet on a faint hope of getting another starring role on the other side of the planet because the Aussie film scene has died and the Aussie theatre scene had been strangled by the Woke Funding Boards who insist that Indigenous people get priority over trained actors in casting roles in all the taxpayer-funded theatre companies.

He was very funny in Catastrophe, despite no longer being hot.

I felt sorry for the mom.

When ABC fired Roseanne they could have cast the actress playing Muriel’s mom to play the role instead.

For those who don't know "Chook" is Australian slang for chicken. Which is why Rhonda at one point pretends to get his name wrong, calling him Turkey.

[quote] I don't think that narrative twist would be allowed now

I loved this film but I couldn’t figure out the scriptwriter's intention.

Muriel seemed to be a reworked version of 'Georgy Girl'. A naive, overweight 'ugly duckling' doesn't transform into a swan but is saved by marriage to a middle-aged man who's prepared to accept an illegitimate child.

Muriel is the modern Georgy who after some misadventures returns home to Porpoise Spit and presumably transforms into a middle-aged, overweight passive woman like her mother.

I don’t know.

Muriel did not return to Porpoise Spit to live. She returned to Sydney with Rhonda. She returned to the city transformed and redeemed.

[quote] She returned to the city transformed and redeemed.

I didn't see that part.

And what happened to that cutie from the video store who got shoved out of the plot?

My friend bumped into the actress Jeanie Drynan once and told her he really loved her performances. He said her whole face lit up in such a gorgeous way. Sounds like she is a very humble and sweet woman.

Here's mum, sis and Deidre recently.

Gabby Millgate is clearly very bitter and jealous of Collette and Griffiths, and that her own career came to nothing. She professes to hate the entertainment industry, but does she? With a face like that she was never going to be a star.

There are niches these days for people with quirky looks and larger frames. But acting generally is an insecure profession. Lots of rejection, unemployment, addictions, mental issues and suicides. It leaves people damaged and most do leave.

[quote] My friend bumped into the actress Jeanie Drynan once

Her biggest film was 'They're a Weird Mob' by Michael Powell in 1966. Unfortunately Powell was going demented in 1995 when he wrote the second volume of his memoirs and he misspelled her name.

His mistake was replicated in IMDB.

The only major US award recognition it got was a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a comedy for Toni Collette. Nicole Kidman deservedly won for To Die For. And it lost out on a Best Picture nomination to Sabrina(!), Get Shorty and The American President.

Jeanie Drynan, Rachel Griffiths and Sophie Lee were all more deserving of a best supporting actress nomination than Kyra Sedgewick, Angelica Huston and Kathleen Quinlan. Mira Sorvino and Kate Winslet deserved their noms.

The bits with the mum are very sad - when she's walking through the supermarket with her sore cracked feet and slips on the comfy slipper things but forgets to pay for them, how Muriel just breezes past her at the wedding, the slack useless family who all take her for granted etc. But I also think her story gives the film more heart and soul than Priscilla or The Castle, which are part of that same 'quirky Aussie comedy' thing. Another excellent one from the same period, though its quirkiness is much darker, is Bad Boy Bubby.

Muriel's Wedding just errs a bit too much on the side of unpleasant for me. Unpleasant characters, depressing storylines. I don't deny it's a great film, but I never want to rewatch it.

r77 Totally agree. Way too depressing. Ugly common people with sad lives, leaves you feeling empty. It ruined ABBA for me lol.

Jeanie Drynan is an Australian National Treasure. Also worth seeking out are Soft Fruit (1999) and Don's Party (1976) of which she is part of a large ensemble of Australian actors.

Also, nobody has mentioned the great Bill Hunter who plays Muriel's father. 1994 was a bumper year for him as he appeared in Muriel's Wedding and Priscilla as Terrence Stamps love interest. Apparently, Terrence Stamp would only accept the role if Bill Hunter played that part. Bill Hunter was a great actor, sadly missed.

I never did see this. Looks ridiculous in the trailer. Australian movies are so odd to me, so......try-hard maybe?

I never understood how the mother could be dealt with and dispatched so callously

Agree wholeheartedly with r76 -- the sad bits with the Mom give the film real emotional weight; otherwise it'd be all meanness and snark. Hilariously written meanness and snark but it's the sad stuff that makes this a Great Film.

There's not a wasted line in that entire script. Or direction. When Tania is trying to make Muriel feel better as they dump her as a friend and she says, "You've got to find people on your level. Like how I found Chook. He's UP on my level." And she really emphasizes the "up" with a hand motion, making it clear that she thinks her level is above Muriel's. Little touches like that keep me coming back and back and back. It's a perfect film.

R80 is Diedre Chambers!

I'm glad there was no sequel. The film ended on exactly the right note.

I'm Australian and I must admit I find Muriel's Wedding a bit cringey and embarrassing (as are most of our films) however it's nice to see you guys appreciated it.

I never understood how the trailer paints it as some raucous comedy. Its more a drama with some comedic bits.

[quote] Also, nobody has mentioned the great Bill Hunter who plays Muriel's father. Bill Hunter was a great actor, sadly missed.

He’s so convincing in this role that i think if I saw him in something else I would automatically assume his character was a selfish asshole from the get-go.

I think the optimistic ending is touching but also a little ominous. So Muriel and Rhonda are going to live in Sydney; what then? Was Muriel going to be Rhonda's caregiver? That would take a lot of time. How would Muriel have time for a job? And what kind of job could she get? She didn't have any job skills. Would they be living on welfare? Doesn't sound to me like they'd have an easy time of it.

I mean Rhonda's not dead, Cheryl. She got rid of the cancer. They'll be fine.

There were lots of hot men in police uniforms IIRC.

[quote] I mean Rhonda's not dead, Cheryl. She got rid of the cancer. They'll be fine.

She's in a wheelchair, Pollyanna. She'll need help dressing, toileting, getting in and out of beds and chairs. Somebody will have to bathe her. So Muriel is going to do all that AND hold down a job that will support them both? Oh, I suppose they'll be at least partially on welfare, but they certainly won't be living the high life. Why do you think their lives will be like, that they'll be partying every night and fucking a different guy (or different guys) every night? Boy, do YOU really need a happy ending.

"I'm not dead, Cheryl" is a quote from the movie r91, no need to get yourself all worked up!

They should make a sequel called 'Killing Deirdre Chambers'.

I think Australia pays a living wage, so it's not so unlikely they could live together and not starve.

Rhonda would not have been happy sitting around being vegetative. She would have found herself a path.

R87, I feel the same about Christopher MacDonald. He's so good at being an asshole in various movies and shows that my family simply calls him "Asshole." As in, "Did you see Asshole in that movie last night?" We say it with genuine affection, though.

McDonald - oh dearing myself....

Deleted scene

Another fun fact about the film. The video shop where Muriel works in Sydney was actually where 'Sean Davis' the Australian Falcon porn star from the early 1990s worked. I used to rent regularly from the shop and 'Sean Davis' looks exactly like he does in those Falcon films. He was also pleasant, though I dared not mention his other work.

Those early 90s Aussie porn video boys were all told the Australian films would not be released locally. But they were widely available here as bootlegs and everyone they knew saw them nude.

Rachel Griffiths deserved every award going for when she rolled up in her wheelchair and one of the Porpoise Spit bimbos bemoaned “You were so full of life.”

She snapped back “I’m not DEAD, Cheryl”.

CHERYL!

R100 I didn't know they were told they wouldn't be released in Australia. Pornography is legal and has been legal to sell in the ACT and NT. Which means of course that everybody else in the rest of the country could easily purchase them.

The films that Sean Davis made with Falcon were legally released in Australia by a company located in the ACT called Blue Diamond. Whilst I can't speak for other states in NSW, though illegal for sex shops to sell X rated videos an unofficial agreement between the police and sex shops allowed sex shops in NSW to sell x rated videos (then later DVDs) and they would not be raided or fined. But it also meant that they were not to sell bootlegs or anything banned. All x rated films went through the Office of Film and Literature Classification. You can find most titles on their website.

So poor Sean Davis might have been told that but Falcon had a distributor in Australia (Blue Diamond) and his films were released legally in the country.

I do find it odd that none of the states have legalised the selling of porn after all these decades. I suppose now that it's all on-line its a mute point. Anyway, NSW turned a blind eye from the 1990s onwards - the police have better things to do than raid and prosecute sellers of porn that people can order via the mail from the ACT and NT.

Sean Davis hasn’t updated his Facebook since 2017, but based on his photos he is clearly out and I doubt he is hiding from his gay porn past. One photo has “Long Dong Sean” as a caption. It also appears he works or worked at a gay nightclub in Sydney. Hope he’s doing well.

I mean clearly he aged but he looks pretty good to me, other than some slightly too obvious eye work.

Of course he can't be the seductive heavy eyelid pouty lipped sex machine forever.

^ Poor (middle-aged) Daniel having to sell himself to those hags.

[quote] I think Australia pays a living wage, so it's not so unlikely they could live together and not starve.

Australia is as much a Welfare State as Britain,R94. 45% of the population rely on the Kindness of Strangers.

R107 that's not kindness of strangers, it's tax money, that you also pay when on welfare. I'm from France and half of the money paid by my employer goes to pension/healthcare/sick leave etc... that's shit is expensive, and it's mandatory, but nobody will open a gofundme account to finance an appendicitis surgery, and beg for money from strangers.

^ Can we go back to talking about Joanie Heslop, fucking Deidra Chambers, and Long Dong Sean Davis?

Mean girl Nicole playing Betty Heslop in the musical stage production, third picture down.

[quote] Those early 90s Aussie porn video boys were all told the Australian films would not be released locally.

Are you one of them?

[quote] punished for being spit roasted by two American sailors?

Was that scene removed like that other scene at R98?

You can see screencaps of it here:

The blond sailor who spit roasted Rhonda moved into online wealth creation.

And did you all know the black sailor was called Butch?

Butch aged better.

There needs to be a sequel. Muriel's Funeral.

[quote] There needs to be a sequel

The story gave us no reason to be optimistic. Muriel's life would repeat that of her mother's.

OP, women can be nasty sluts if they want to be, but a gay man writing in their defense isn’t new or revolutionary. I think it’s detrimental to gays to be defending them. Let straights regulate each other, stay the fuck out of it. She’d probably be the kind of woman to hit on gay men in our own bars.

I think the guy who wrote the movie based it on the experiences of his sister, who did embezzle money from her family. He said she had a happy ending, that she "fell head over heels in love" with some guy and had a baby with him. But that was a long time ago. Who knows if she's still with the guy she fell "head over heels" in love with or how the child turned out. Anyway, I didn't think the ending of "Muriel's Wedding" was a particularly happy one. They were leaving Porpoise Spit for Sydney, but I doubt their lives would have been much better. The ending was a big question mark.

Wow. I just watched this film for the first time and it wasn’t at all what I expected.

I expected a feel-good Nora Ephrom romantic comedy and this one was quite sad overall. I felt so bad for the mother. Why couldn’t something bad have happened to the dad?

And like others stated above, I would have learned to like the swimmer. They could have fallen in love and lived a happy life.

Couldn't Rhonda have packed a bag before leaving home at the end?

Muriel was a terrible friend.

Was the sister, Joanie, “special?”

r121 I just watched this film for the first time yesterday as well! Can't believe I've been sitting on it for so long, it's an absolute delight. Immediately on the list of my favourite movies.

I enjoyed the first half a lot more, it was so colourful and all my senses were fully engaged. Got a bit too dark towards the end and there wasn't enough of a pay-off for all the misery Muriel's mom was put through. Still, I love how taut the story was, the camerawork was great.

I adore the lighting – it's as lit in such a uniform, expansive Australian way, there is not a shadow to be found in that house of theirs. And then you have the lovely green/red combo in the Sydney apartment, and the explosion of colours in the bar where the girls deliver Muriel some home truths. Really great stuff for 1994.

Final couple of thoughts: I can't believe Toni Colette once looked like that, and also Rachel Griffiths stole every scene she was in with her presence.

R125 Toni gained 40 pounds specifically for that role with the help of a dietician.

r126 Really? I thought they cast her specifically for her weight, makes me appreciate her work a lot more. I smiled when her character said she might become a famous actress one day.

Does anyone else remember another quirky 90s Australian comedy, Hotel DeLove?