Starring:	Toni Collette	101min
	Bill Hunter
	Rachel Griffiths	1994
Screenplay:	PJ Hogan	Comedy
Director:	PJ Hogan	Colour

Region	2	Studio:	Buena Vista
Format	Single Sided, Single Layer	Subtitles	English
			English Closed Captions
Aspect ratio	4:3		Swedish / Norweigen
			Danish / Finnish
Anamorphic	n/a
Soundtracks	Dolby Digital 2.0	Case type	Amaray

The DVD * 1/2		The Movie * *
This is another fullscreen only release from Disney. While not as ruined as, say, 101 Dalmatians, the framing still looks little cramped to these eyes. Picture quality otherwise is largely good if not outstanding, a notable exception being the title shots of blue sky, across which a bouquet flies. Here the subtle gradations in colour breaks down into crude blocks - quite noticeable even from a distance away. The 2 channel sound mix isn't bad, but some leakage onto the surround speakers on sibilant dialogue is noticeable - I've never heard this old VHS curse appear on DVD before. There are a couple of audio blips on scene changes also (chapters 12 to 13 is an obvious one). And, being a Disney DVD, that's just about it, I'm afraid.		As romantic comedies go, this suffers somewhat by not being very romantic and eventually becoming not very comedic. In fact, by the end it less resembles a comedy than a Ken Loach ordeal. It all starts harmlessly enough. Muriel (Colette) is an overweight, self-loathing misfit, whose raison d'etre is the worship of ABBA and the hope of marriage to just about anyone. Spurned by her town councillor father (Hunter) and all her bitchy contemporaries, she finds comfort and friendship with an old independently-minded classmate (Griffiths) and, assuming the moniker Mariel, marches off with her to work in a Sydney video store. So far, so good, and we seem to be on tram lines when she meets an awkward-but-rather-nice movie addict who genuinely fancies her. Skip the next paragraph to avoid learning further plot points. Gruesome derailment occurs here however, due to an ever increasing number of tragedies - not comedic, but melodramatic. In the main this is well handled so, whilst unconventional, it looks as if writer/director Hogan is going to pull off a very tricky job. But characters start behaving out of character, we lose count of the number of times we lose sympathy with Mu(a)rial and, the biggest tragedy of all, Hogan throws the whole thing away with a final five minutes so superficial and excruciatingly awful it negates the rest of the movie. Oops. So despite a tasty bridal party headed by Collette and the astounding Griffiths, many may find the wedding cake just too bitter to swallow.