Mary Reilly

OK, so this film was trashed by the critics... and I would bet a fortune that the average MTV generation movie-goer will practically fall asleep watching it - but I posit that their trouble with this film says more about them than it does about Frear's Gothic tale.

There are weaknesses - above all the fact that everyone else (including Julia Roberts ) has an accent but Malkovitch refuses to even attempt one. What's an American accent doing in the middle of all this? Malkovitch also seems to be channeling his own performance in Frear's masterpiece, Dangerous Liaisons - but if you haven't seen that film you should love what he does in this one.

But other than that, I found the slow pace to be totally gripping... The entire story is told from the viewpoint of Mary Reilly, and I have never seen Julia Roberts do a better job than here. She is wonderfully effective... it is worth watching this film only for her performance. But it is also worth watching because of the attention to period detail. You really get a feeling of what it must have been like to live in the 19th century. The manners, the utensils, the class differences...the psycho-sexual straight-jacket.

I will not give any details about the film - I'll let those who watch it discover it for themselves. But I would like to say one thing about the pace. This is not an action film, it is not even a horror film in the traditional sense. It is mainly a story of discovery - dealing with the slow realization of hidden desires and uncontrolled motivations; as such it should not - nay, could not be done at a quicker pace. It's really too bad that fewer and fewer people today seem to be capable of watching something that is subtle and slow. The loss is theirs.

A housemaid (Julia Roberts) falls in love with Dr. Jekyll (John Malkovich) and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde (John Malkovich).

Stephen Frears, an excellent director, cast two very big names and put them in a twist of the Jekyll and Hyde story. This is not a horror tale, and the violence and gore are kept to a minimum. In some sense it is a love story, but only in the most general of terms. More accurately, it is a woman who is loyal to her employer.

The strangest thing about this is how little they tried to make the two halves look different. When Hyde comes out, he is still obviously Malkovich. How can they not notice? Someone remarks that they bear a resemblance, but it is much more than that.

John Malkovich was the perfect actor to play/ jekyll hyde- he personfies the good and evil that can coexist in a person. I was very impressed that Julie Roberts had the demeanor of a household servant down so well. My husbands' family comes from a line of women who were domestics when they first came to America in the 1880's-- and his mother said that's how they had to act. Even though it was a little slow- I liked the way the story developed. The fact that Mary can't hate her abusive father because she came from him- helps the doctor understand the dilemna. Altogether a satisfying movie that takes a different view of the Stevenson classic.

I thought it was actually a very good film. I didnt realise when I started watching it that it would be so graphic, I never thought of Roberts doing a Period Horror, and she does better than i would have thought... although the accent is a bit dodgy at times. John is excellent- a very scary Hyde/Jekkel! Glenn Close makes a scarely good whore mistress! all in all a good film well worth watching!

Not many movies can get away with keeping Julia Roberts from smiling, but Mary Reilly does so well. It's a movie of subtleties and moods. Its dark themes deal with the oppression of a strict, class-based society in Victorian England as well as the secrets that we all hide inside our hearts. The familiar tale takes intriguing new turns from the viewpoint of the house's servants. John Malkovich, while a tad thin on his English accent, delivers a fantastic performance as both Jekyll and Hyde as he plumbs the depths of morality and the human soul. Hyde is a stark contrast of freedom among the restrained servants of the Jekyll house, and his subtle sexual innuendoes quietly violate the chastity of Victorian stereotypes. Much of the violence occurs off camera until near the climax of the film, which may be one of it's shortcomings. The film is very quiet and slow and may put some viewers to sleep. Another issue I had was the lovely Henson-Workshop-provided effects at the end, which are imaginative, but don't make a bit of sense when compared to the rest of the film. If you can stomach a quiet and very subtle thriller, however, this is a real gem.