Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

If you picked up some poo and clapped your hands together you would have more fun, Mr. Hyde lands in the dull section and never leaves it. Scott isn't perfect but his performance(s) are the best part of the film which is not saying a lot. He seems to be enjoying himself as Mr Hyde but he would look more at home in a gay bar he is just to camp to be believable and it adds little to the audience's enjoyment. Hyde isn't exactly scary, more like a mix between The Joker and Jack Sparrow but whatever the mix it does not work or come together. He also isn't monstrous, which disappointed me no end. The ending was obvious and a real let down when it could have been much more so you end up feeling flat and thinking there goes 90 minutes of my life I wont get back, there is no suspense whats so ever and Mr Hyde is about as scary as watching paint dry. The court scene is laughable. In a word AVOID.

This is yet another version of Robert Louis Steveson's THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE and if truth be told this is possibly the most bland version you will see . It's inoffensive containing the sort of material that'd make it through he censors of a dull daytime TV soap . It is as uninvolving as it is inoffensive . Director Paolo Barzman doesn't have a big enough budget to do the story justice and much of the story is told in medium close up and we get some very choppy editing . When Doctor Jekyll relates a story about being in the Amazon we don't get an establishing shot of wild untamed majestic shots of the tropical rain forest we get a close up of a fire and a couple of Oriental extras giving the impression that it was filmed in someone's fireside living room . Hey I wonder if ....

Scottish actor Dougray Scott plays the title character and he's somewhat ill cast in the role . His American accent is totally unconvincing as Dr Henry Jekyll and seems to think Mr Hyde is a bit of a camp homosexual , honestly the villain comes across as some pantomime dame and will have you booing and hissing and throwing popcorn at the screen . It's not even bad enough to be entertaining high camp , just ... oh what's the word ? ... oh bland . That's the word I'm looking for

That said I did see Dougray Scott in an episode of DOCTOR WHO a couple of weeks ago and his performance was probably the best thing about the episode so one wonders if he could be a ready made replacement for Matt Smith once he leaves the role . At the very worst Scott giving a bad performance as the Doctor would be ..... bland

I love how people say the transformation was good when there is little transformation from Dr. to Hyde. All they did here was have the actor twitch his head and act stiff and make bizarre faces like he was constipated.

So all you have is the worst remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!

The one BIG mistake this film makes is when the helper of DR. Jekyll testifies, it doesn't make any sense just like most of this slow moving farce.

I gave it a 2 instead of 1 cause of the yellow lights that were used during the night scenes (HPS Bulbs In the Light Fixtures) just sheer brilliance.

First and most important, the film is solid and entertaining and Scott gives the performance of his life.

Most interesting to this reviewer was how ambitious this production was. In the first decade of the millennium, the Canuck industry was still trying to find itself. Soul searching.

Ultimately the industry would decide it was easier and more profitable to aim for niche product other producers had avoided.

Which is why (and I have said this before) 90% of the X-Mas movies that appear in late fall are Canadian, and without shame or apology.

(There is even a 100% Canuck version of Miracle on 34th Street, but that is another review entirely).

Canada is also where franchises go to die, which is why you might see might see version 4 or 5 of a film series you did not know HAD a 4 or 5..? Canada to the rescue.

So in 2008 we had a rare in stance of Canada perhaps getting too ambitious for its own good, and this is the result. For Canadians, it is almost comic to see Toronto pretending to be a US city -- again -- and reporters carrying mikes where the call letters start with "W".

That said, the film is solid. Skerritt picked up a paycheck for doing only a few scenes and Krista Bridges -- an actress you would ordinarily only see in the aforesaid X-Mas knockoffs -- also does a solid job.

Recommended.

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Dougray Scott), unable to stop himself from transforming into the murderous Edward Hyde, wants his attorney to secure him a speedy trial, a guilty verdict and a quick execution.

The star power in this film is Tom Skerritt, which does not say much for this film. But we also have Kim Bubbs (as a secretary), a friend of Killer Reviews. So, that was good enough reason for me to watch it! (See Kim in "The Thing".)

The horror part is pretty average -- this story has been told so many times, you really cannot add a new element to it any more. (What is interesting, at least to me, is that this film seemingly exists in a world circa 2008, but that would be a world where the classic Jekyll/Hyde story never existed... weird.)

The trial scenes... wow, big fail. There is no cross-examination, there is too much conjecture from the defense attorney outside of closing arguments. The person who wrote this film is not familiar with court procedures apparently. There are worse court scenes in films, but this still makes the list of bad ones.