Muriel’s Wedding is considered a classic of Australian cinema and is largely responsible for breaking the international careers of writer-director PJ Hogan and the movie’s brilliant titular star Toni Collette. Now, 15 years after their initial pairing, Collette and Hogan have reunited on a film called Mental – a comedy due for release in 2012 that’s currently being shot in Queensland.
The screenplay for Mental was written by Hogan and features Collette as an insane nanny named Shaz. In a recent interview Hogan told Variety: “Like ‘Muriel’s Wedding’, ‘Mental’ is a comedy, but a comedy based on reality, laced with pain and brimming with flawed but lovable characters. Shaz was hilarious, outrageous, dangerous, courageous, inspiring, heartbreaking and totally, totally mad. And she changed my life.”
This concept of flawed but lovable characters and comedy based on reality sounds suspiciously similar to what made Muriel’s such a wonderful movie and we’re feeling psyched about Mental already.
Casting agency XS Entertainment has revealed some more information about the characters in a casting callout:
Mental is a new Aussie comedy about a dysfunctional family. When Mum suffers a nervous break down, Dad hires a nanny (Toni Collette) to look after his 5 ‘off beat’ daughters, whose ages range from 12-17yrs.
Casting:
CORAL: 16 years old. As the oldest sister and about to become a woman she is trying to find her place in the world. She is constantly googling on the internet looking for symptoms and self diagnosing her mental condition
MICHELLE: 15 years old. MICHELLE is frightened of the world and spends a lot of time in her room with sad eyes staring into middle distance. Unlike her sisters who are very outgoing and confident and proud of being ‘mental’.
LEANNE: 14 years old. Finds most days to be repulsive and has diagnosed herself as autistic by looking it up on google. She has a downbeat personal – wears black – could be going through a goth phase.
KAYLEEN: 13 years old. Is cocky and confident but has diagnosed herself (with the help of google) as a sociopath – which is really a convenient cover for her rudeness.
JANE: 12 years old. Jane is rather vain. Blessed with luxuriant long flaming red hair in which she takes great pride and care. The youngest and also the prettiest in the family. She is secretly popular but doesn’t want the others to know.
This sounds promising.
To celebrate let’s all do our favourite Muriel’s Wedding quotes.
Mine is when the bridal boutique sales assistant says to Rhonda (in a wheelchair): “Now just a minute – you can’t come in here and threaten brides, I don’t care how unfortunate, you are.”
