This film tells the story of the chambermaid who worked for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Thankfully, this turgid mess bombed at the box office so we were spared sequels about Dracula's chauffeur, Frankenstein's tax attorney and the Wolfman's proctologist.
Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) works as a maid for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich) in 19th century London. I kid you not when I state that this movie essentially follows Mary around while she does her household chores and every so often we get a scene that peeks in on the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde. If you don't know what that story's about, go down to the damn library and check out the book or watch one of the 37,000,000,000 other versions of the tale that have been committed to film. Basically, this thing is a Cliff's Notes version of Jekyll and Hyde, crossed with a documentary on the brutal drudgery of 19th century working class Britons, mixed with a Lifetime movie about a woman overcoming her memories of fatherly abuse.
The heart of Mary Reilly is supposed to be about the attraction Mary feels for both Jekyll and Hyde and the affection they feel in return. A big problem is that it's hard to believe any man being lovestruck by this pale-faced woman with Conan O'Brien eyebrows. Julia Roberts is deliberately stripped of most of the beauty artifice that props up her appearance in other films and the audience is undeniably confronted with the fact that Roberts is not that pretty. She has very distinct features that need to be accommodated on screen and that doesn't happen here.
Another defining negative about this film is very poor acting jobs by three big stars. Roberts intermittently adopts an Irish accent that rivals Kevin Costner's dialect in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for its "now you hear it, now you don't" quality. John Malkovich does worse than sleepwalk through his double role, even giving Edward Hyde an extremely pronounced limp early in the film which completely disappears later on. Either Malkovich and director Stephen Frears both forgot about the limp or Malkovich just got tired of doing it and Frears couldn't make him. Glenn Close is almost as bad as the owner of a London brothel. Her entire performance consists of giving her character an Elvis lip curl.
The bottom line is that Mary Reilly is a movie about an uninteresting woman who stands still while an amazing story happens around her. The idea of telling a famous tale from the perspective of a minor character isn't a bad one. A movie about the London cop trying to track down and capture Edward Hyde sounds good to me. The trick is the minor character actually has to do something important in the story. Mary Reilly simply hovers and watches like the boring person on a reality show.
Unless you're dying to view YET ANOTHER crappy adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, skip this film.
Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) works as a maid for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich) in 19th century London. I kid you not when I state that this movie essentially follows Mary around while she does her household chores and every so often we get a scene that peeks in on the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde. If you don't know what that story's about, go down to the damn library and check out the book or watch one of the 37,000,000,000 other versions of the tale that have been committed to film. Basically, this thing is a Cliff's Notes version of Jekyll and Hyde, crossed with a documentary on the brutal drudgery of 19th century working class Britons, mixed with a Lifetime movie about a woman overcoming her memories of fatherly abuse.
The heart of Mary Reilly is supposed to be about the attraction Mary feels for both Jekyll and Hyde and the affection they feel in return. A big problem is that it's hard to believe any man being lovestruck by this pale-faced woman with Conan O'Brien eyebrows. Julia Roberts is deliberately stripped of most of the beauty artifice that props up her appearance in other films and the audience is undeniably confronted with the fact that Roberts is not that pretty. She has very distinct features that need to be accommodated on screen and that doesn't happen here.
Another defining negative about this film is very poor acting jobs by three big stars. Roberts intermittently adopts an Irish accent that rivals Kevin Costner's dialect in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for its "now you hear it, now you don't" quality. John Malkovich does worse than sleepwalk through his double role, even giving Edward Hyde an extremely pronounced limp early in the film which completely disappears later on. Either Malkovich and director Stephen Frears both forgot about the limp or Malkovich just got tired of doing it and Frears couldn't make him. Glenn Close is almost as bad as the owner of a London brothel. Her entire performance consists of giving her character an Elvis lip curl.
The bottom line is that Mary Reilly is a movie about an uninteresting woman who stands still while an amazing story happens around her. The idea of telling a famous tale from the perspective of a minor character isn't a bad one. A movie about the London cop trying to track down and capture Edward Hyde sounds good to me. The trick is the minor character actually has to do something important in the story. Mary Reilly simply hovers and watches like the boring person on a reality show.
Unless you're dying to view YET ANOTHER crappy adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, skip this film.