Mary Reilly (1996)

Stephen Frears reunites with the production talents who made the tempting Dangerous Liaisons for this new look at the infamous Dr. Jekyll (a deft John Malkovich). Instead of being in the laboratory where the good doctor unlocks his evil twin, we stay in the mansion overlooking the lab. An inquisitive, proper maid, Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) slowly becomes Dr. Jekyll's confidant. Rather than a horror story, the film is a spooky mystery that keeps us in the dark, and what a wonderful dark Frears and his designers have fashioned. Roberts carries the movie, digging deep for her best dramatic work to date. Though some may wish she'd show more passion, she holds her emotions appropriately in check. The movie faced considerable, well-documented troubles, including the reshooting of several scenes months after the initial production. This probably affected the finale, which has little impact and nearly ruins a good thing. --Doug Thomas Amazon.com essential video

Mary Reilly

This is a well acted and directed alternative version of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde classic tale. It does have some graphic scenes which would make it unsuitable for younger children. It is one of John Malkovich's best acting as the characters that he portrays are believable. July 16, 2008

Nice Use Of Alternate History Within A Work Of Fiction

Re-telling a classic tale from a new perspective, usually courtesy of a relatively minor character from the original work, is an old and in some cases dubious literary tradition. It has been undertaken with deliciously successful results in, say, The Return of Moriarty, by John Gardner, or has fallen shamefully flat: Donald McCaig's recent Rhett Butler's People comes to mind.

The 1996 film Mary Reilly is the lukewarm but not charmless on-screen adaptation of the superior 1990 "alternate history" novel by the acclaimed Valerie Martin, who in penning her tale drew on Robert Louis Stevenson's magnum opus, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the film as in the novel, Mary Reilly, an Irish maidservant far from home and melancholy, lately given work in the household of one Dr Henry Jekyll, a London gentleman and medical researcher in the year 1885, forms a friendship of sorts with her dual-natured employer, and stands in as a background figure in the events described to greater effect in the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Inexplicable mega-star Julia Roberts is passable here and courageously attempts an Irish accent with moderate success--hey, I can't do one well, either, Julia, and trust me, I've tried---while John Malkovich, not quite the Dr. Jekyll the original author described, is still enjoyably creepy in this role. Though the murders in this movie are largely implied and committed off-screen, there's a compensatory scene in which a tub full of fresh-caught eels meet their maker in the Jekyll kitchen and that should churn even the toughest stomachs.

Fans of the Stevenson novel tend to either love this second take on the old tale or else recoil at the ballsy blasphemy of what Martin and film maker Christopher Hampton (Atonement) did. For those who loved the movie, I say please read the much-better novel. And for those fans of Stevenson's original who sneered at the movie, I'd note here that Valerie Martin's book is a much more a case of loving tribute to the nineteenth-century masterpiece than Hampton's motion picture.
February 29, 2008

On my Top 10 List.

My Top 10 list has not changed in over a decade. Mary Reilly is totaly on my list. I was pretty dissapointed with the book, however, & would love to know where to buy or downloaad the script. Everything about this movie is so cool...great acting, appropriate lack of make-up, unresolved remonatic tension between Mary & Jekyl, unresolves sexual tension between Mary & Hyde, the costumes, the buildings, everything looks & sounds right for the time it's set in. January 1, 2008

Mary Reilly

Julia Roberts and John Malkovich were great together. It kept me on the toes through out the whole movie. August 23, 2007

What was the casting director thinking?!?

I don't know why this movie got so many great reviews on here. The movie is not bad, but is certainly not good. However, what makes this movie really horrible is Julia Roberts. I am a HUGE Julia fan, but her performance in this movie is laughable. She can't hold a stead Irish accent-- at times she sounds like good old American Julia, and at other times, a VERY strong Irish accent comes out of her mouth, with no explanation for the sudden change. I believe this must have been a critical point in her career, at which point someone must have told her, "stick with what you do well... romantic comedies!" July 12, 2007

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