"Actor: Belinda Jarrett"

• Muriel's Wedding | DVD | (12/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Ever since the late 1970s when the Australian New Wave was in full surge, Down Under directors have delivered movies that often hit you like news from another planet. Offbeat characters, weird narrative twists and a tart mixture of laughs and catastrophe--this is the juice that fuels such flicks as Proof, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Strictly Ballroom, Heavenly Creatures and, most certainly, Muriel's Wedding. Directed by PJ Hogan (who would go on to helm the Hollywood hit My Best Friend's Wedding), this little gem follows tradition by featuring an authentic misfit: Muriel (Toni Collette), a great, overweight horse of a girl obsessed with getting married and the music of ABBA. Appropriately, we first meet Muriel at a wedding, all trussed up in a leopardskin number she's boosted for the occasion. When her snotty peers insist that she give up the bridal bouquet to someone who might actually get hitched, when one of the guests turns out to be a clerk in the very store where Muriel ripped off her outfit, you've just got to laugh, she's such an unmitigated mess. A loser, her philandering politician father (Bill Hunter) calls her--along with his doormat wife and his other couch-potato offspring. But this movie's no exercise in geek-bashing. As Muriel takes up with feisty Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) and moves from Porpoise Spit to the big city, her good-hearted grin and zest for life draw us in despite hilarious gaffes and mishaps. (Making out with a boy for the first time, Muriel suddenly finds herself awash in styrofoam: the oaf has unzipped the beanbag chair instead of her skin-tight leather pants.) Muriel's Wedding covers territory Hollywood would banish from a comedy--Rhonda's cancer, the suicide of Muriel's mother, a marriage of convenience to an arrogant athlete--yet, like its heroine, it never loses its sense of humour, its will to move on to whatever good thing might happen next. Everyone in the idiosyncratic cast is terrific, but it's Toni Collette's Dancing Queen who makes Muriel's Wedding a cinematic celebration you won't forget. --Kathleen Murphy

• Pretty Woman / Muriel's Wedding / Green Card | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Pretty Woman (Dir. Garry Marshall 1990): Academy Award-nominee Julia Roberts and charismatic leading man Richard Gere light up the screen in one of Hollywoods biggest blockbusters. Roberts stars as a street-wise down-on-her-luck working girl whose chance encounter with a handsome corporate mogul leads to an improbable love affair... and a modern-day Cinderella fantasy that has captured the hearts of movie-goers all over the world. Featuring a chart-topping soundtrack this is an irresistible and timeless romantic comedy. Muriel's Wedding (Dir. P.J. Hogan 1994): You're invited to one of the most celebrated and audaciously funny hit comedies of the year - Muriel's Wedding! Follow frumpy misguided Muriel Heslop on her lifelong quest for a glitzy fairy-tale wedding. With visions of nuptials dancing in her head this ABBA-obsessed misfit ditches her pathetic life and plastic friends in a small Australian suburb for big-city dreams in Sydney. But the road to the altar takes surprising twists and turns - and Muriel is about to learn the lesson of a lifetime. Wry witty and hailed by critics everywhere Muriel's Wedding is one affair you don't want to miss. Green Card (Dir. Peter Weir 1990): Thinking they will never see each other again Bronte a demure New Yorker and George a newly immigrated Frenchman agree to a marriage of convenience. Everything goes off without a hitch until immigration officials investigate their marriage and suspect it's a fake. To prove they're husband and wife these two opposites move in together for an hilarious and memorable weekend of love and laughter...