Mary Reilly
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Movie Reviews of Mary Reilly
Movie Review: Mary Reilly
Summary: 4 Stars
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.Movie Review: Not-so Pretty Woman
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw this movie in the theatres when it first came out in 1996, and have to admit that at the time, it didn't leave much of an impression. I'm a reader of classic literature, and was familiar enough with Robert Louis Stevenson's original masterpiece, though I have never read the modern adaptation by Valerie Martin, on which this movie is largely based. I'm not one of the purists who gets bent out of shape if a movie deviates all that much from a written source, provided the source is fictional, and the movie well-done in it's own right. I actually appreciated the twist of telling the classic Jeckyll-Hyde story from the viewpoint of a woman, as this was particularly absent in Stevenson's original work.
I picked up a copy of the DVD the other day (not sure why), and after watching this little-known, atmospheric movie again the other night, have decided that it's better the second time around. Maybe that's the better way to judge most movies after all: some clearly blow you away with the first viewing, but many films like that, when viewed again after the distance of many years, lose their luster- "Mary Reilly" is the other way around for me. Watching it again after 12 years, I appreciated many aspects of the movie that just slipped by me the first time.
For one, while much has been made of the "miscasting" of Julia Roberts, and her on-again, off-again Irish accent in this film, I think it's actually one of her better acting performances. I'm not a fan of Robert's, mainly because the bulk of her movies involve precious little serious acting: most of the time she is just asked to look pretty. "Mary Reilly" (where she is a house servant to the troubled Dr. Jeckyll- John Malkovich- in 1885 London) is the only movie of hers I have seen where her body is not primarily on display. Wearing period attire throughout the film, and with generally no makeup to embellish her face (which actually looks somewhat scarred and even haggard in many scenes), she manages to convey Mary's conflicting emotions very well.....she clearly has a fondness for Dr. Jeckyll, and conveys both fear and paradoxical attraction to the malevolent Hyde without being given all that much to say. Some real acting going on here, and while some just call this miscasting, I appreciated a side of this actress that I've not seen on display before. Her 50:50 success with the Irish accent didn't bother me as much as it apparently did for many other reviewers: at least she tried. Odd that no one gets on Malkovich (a superb actor, particularly in menacing roles like Hyde) for NEVER attempting the same. What bothered me more about Malkovich's character was not the lack of any attempt to make Hyde physically much different from Jeckyll (which many thought was hilariously thin), but the fact that Hyde's voice was NO different than Jeckyll's, other than being given more disturbing things to say. In any event, kudos to Julia Roberts for going "outside-the-box" in this role. Perhaps her role in "Michael Collins" came close to this, with a similarly subdued performance, including the accent.
The main theme of the movie is of course well-known to fans of Stevenson's work, and my only complaint here is I wish the screenwriters had gone a little deeper with Malkovich's character, and given him a few more lines and a little more screen time by himself, to explore the timeless theme of good and evil within the heart of every man. A little less time dwelling on Julia Roberts face, and a little more with glimpses into Jeckyll's torment would have worked better.
The costumes and sets to recreate Victorian London were well-done, though the squalor of the back streets and the forboding atmospheric fog were only given a small role in the film- and at times the interior lighting effects were at odds with the candle-light era: a bit too bright at times, when darkness, fog, and obscurity would not only have been more realistic, but more effective.
The musical score, which totally escaped my attention the first time I saw this film, adds nicely to the tension leading up to Mary's discovery of Jeckyll's secret. It's an understated soundtrack, so you won't find yourself humming bars from it months later- but it clearly adds to the atmosphere of the film, and never detracts from a scene.
The pacing of the movie is deliberately slow, and the violence brief, never gratuitous, and largely implied. But, at 108 minutes, I never felt the movie dragged unnecessarily. Just about right.
I give "Mary Reilly" 3 stars overall. My measure of a movie's worth is whether I would watch it more than once, and whether it holds it's entertainment value after a number of years. In this respect, "Mary Reilly" comfortably measures up. Not a classic, but worth viewing.
I'll take it over "Pretty Woman" anyday. Well, if I'm in the mood, anyway.....
Movie Review: Half Baked, but Partially Edible
Summary: 3 Stars
As far as filmmaking goes, this production only deserves 2 stars. However, because its classic Jekyll & Hyde source material (with its dark Freudian roots that reach into the subject of substance abuse) and the gloomy Jack-the-Ripper-in-London time period are so universally compelling, the movie is somewhat engrossing without really being effective.
I haven't read the novel on which MARY REILLY is based, but you can see the framework is there for a striking work. As the heroine is a lowly servant in the mysterious Dr. Jekyll's home, there's an element of spying involved that heightens the tension, and the role of women in Victorian times is a rich dramatic subject in itself. (Mary has few options in life and is forever treading on thin ice. When she risks listening outside her employer's door, it's a very different situation than if you or I were doing the same today.) There are no significant female characters in Stevenson's original novella, almost as if they weren't worth writing about, and telling the story from a female viewpoint opens the door for new layers of perspective.
A huge problem is that Stephen Frears fails to sustain an atmosphere that's either realistically grisly or theatrically horrifying. For one thing, although the occasional fog bank is rolled out, the lighting seems all wrong. When Mary hears noises in the night and creeps downstairs to investigate, the stairwell is lit with warm, honeyish light as if this were a sunny morning. (I don't know if this lighting is intended to flatter the actress playing Mary or not, but its as false and distracting as the clear polish that glimmers on her nails from time to time.) This sort of choice may seem minor, yet it completely undermines any air of menace. This same insensitivity to mood arises in the costuming, which is correct in its detailing but also brand-spanking-new. (When the impoverished Mary runs a scary errand, she wears a neat, sweeping tweed coat that would be perfectly at home in a Brooks Brothers or Burbury shop window today.)
These details aside, what truly derails the film is the fact that its stars don't share any chemistry. Julia Roberts is a natural sensualist while John Malkovich is coolly cerebral, and at least here, the opposites don't attract. It's also frustrating that, for some intellectual reason that may have appealed to Mr. Malkovich more than anyone else, Jekyll and Hyde aren't made to look very different. (Hyde basically looks like Jekyll with a hangover, and in need of a haircut.) This central conceit is completely jarring, and pretty much renders the drama ridiculous.
MARY REILLY was originally to be produced with Tim Burton (who ultimately chose to do ED WOOD instead) directing Winona Ryder. In this case, the idea of what might have been is far more exciting than what we finally get.
Movie Review: Nice Use Of Alternate History Within A Work Of Fiction
Summary: 3 Stars
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.
Movie Review: "Downstirrs, Upstirrs . . . . in my lady's chamber ....."
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a strange, grotesque vision of the Jekyll Household seen through so haunted eyes of Julia Roberts as the lowly help, [give or take a few problems of her own].Fog in the throat? Yes, most definately a complex picture of the doomed doctor's household and staff. This IS a mood piece par excellence, with a DY-NO-MITE Hyde-Jekyll Transformation sequence, very unusual and so different from the, effective though they are, earlier Barrymore/Tracy/March versions. It leaves you with that queasy feeling. Malkovich is suitably shrill as the doctor in distress. Glenn Close? Always stalwart as the crimson-lipped Madame.
It is Miss Julia who impresses most with her ultra-vulnerability - a perfect realization of this girl. ...