Muriels Wedding

First up, I've never seen this movie before. Secondly, what better way to watch a movie that's been recommended to me for a while then to enjoy it with a newly remastered 5.1 soundtrack?

It's always been Muriel Heslop's dream to get out of her dump of a home in Porpoise Spit and to get married. Why? Because she's never really had any friends and no-one really likes her, so getting married gives her a chance to start a new life and escape to a new world. Her chance comes along when her mother gives her a blank cheque to join a beauty course, but instead Muriel decides to take a vacation in Queensland and meet up with her despising friends.

"You're terrible Muriel!"

When she's outcast again, Muriel bumps into an old school mate in Rhonda (Rachael Griffiths). The two embark on a wonderful journey of self discovery until Rhonda is diagnosed with spinal cancer. It's here where the slightly surreal occurs as Muriel, desperate to marry anyone, ties the knot with a South African looking for Australian citizenship, her father's having an affair with another woman and his career is going down the drain after charges of bribery, her mother takes one too many sleeping pills, Rhonda is confined to a wheelchair and their friendship is hanging by a thread.

A very nice transfer indeed given that the disc is both anamorphically enhanced and confined to a single layer. Given the quality of film used, the image presented is vibrant in color and clarity and is sure to please indeed.

Black level was fine with a few scenes needing that little extra notch lower to be perfect, with shadow detail of good quality. The transfer is sharp and detailed throughout with only very, very slight aliasing seen in some usual suspect scenes.

There were no MPEG artifacting to be seen and the film itself was surprisingly clean.

Ooooh, ABBA in 5.1 is very nice indeed! The only way to sum it up is glorious. As my wife said while swinging her head around the room, "This sounds unreal".

As you can probably imagine, the 5.1 soundtrack does the music justice but it doesn't carry through for the rest of the soundtrack. Surround effects are minimal as the rest of the audio is restricted to centre channel dialogue with a stereo separated front soundstage.

Not much in the way of extras on the disc other than a theatrical trailer and cast biographies. The big plus of this disc is the music presented in 5.1 which should entice alot of ABBA fans.

I really enjoyed this movie. I was expecting a very feel-good oriented movie but once again, Australian directors give you something different to the norm we are fed out of Hollywood.

I gather everyone else out there has seen the movie so I don't think I need to recommend the DVD to anyone who wants the best presentation of the movie to date. :)