How others will see it. This alleged comedy is for the liberal-minded person who thinks its okay to rob your parents and ruin their lives, so that you can keep up with your shallow ex-friends on a posh vacation. This same liberal-minded person may actually find it amusing when the aforementioned shallow ex-friends cheat on each other, and otherwise behave in the most vulgar and childish fashion.
The "comedy" continues when Rhonda's double one night stand assault Muriel's comparatively innocent boyfriend, after he somehow back ends a bird cage out the window. Clumsy bloke.
How I felt about it. Muriel matures, I suppose, as the film progresses, and comes to realize that being a single caretaker of a good friend trumps married life with a now-interested Aryan swimming god. Having received what she has long pined for, she's eager to give it up, to regain the favor of the one person now disapproving of her, Rhonda.
Such an alleged transition from ugly duckling to swan makes for a more triumphant film, if one can disregard the fact that she's committed felonies, contributed to the death of her mother, married someone for status and a ceremony, abandoned this marriage, and abandoned her father (admittedly a cheater) in his time of need, et cetera, et cetera.
The good news about the transition is that she's probably not going to commit any more crimes, and if she pays back her father, she will at least have made some restitution and assumed some responsibility for her past actions. This is commendable, but is it really celebration time? Won't Muriel soon get tired of playing nurse to her embittered wheelchair-bound friend, and regret walking out on her trophy swim god husband?
The tragedy of the film is the mother's descent into depression. Unresponsive to begin with, and disappointed in her unemployed grown children, her final blow is Billy's leaving her following a web of lies for a younger and more vivacious woman. Bill gets most of the blame, but their marriage could have continued indefinitely had Muriel's hot checks not compelled a plot resolution.
Rhonda's paralysis is a secondary tragedy, but its timing implies divine punishment for her immediately preceding promiscuous behavior. In that case, it's a good thing that Muriel's boyfriend Brice finds the wrong zipper.
It's unfortunate that Muriel's retro-pop obsession is with passable-plus ABBA, when if she had been willing to go back one more decade, she could have had her pick of great girl groups. Most of them were black, though, which does make them more difficult to identify with.
Minor moments in the film don't seem to fit. Nervous Brice (Matt Day) wants Muriel (why not, she's the lead) but he disappears from the story, only to reappear at her wedding. Was he invited? Why would he show? In any event, we never see him again after that. Another disappearing act is Muriel's presumed much younger sister Penelope, who lives in the same house but is onscreen for about three seconds.