Mary Reilly Poster

Mary Reilly (1996)

Drama | Romance 
Rayting:   5.8/10 14.1K votes
Country: USA | UK
Language: English
Release date: 13 June 1996

A housemaid falls in love with Dr. Jekyll and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde.

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User Reviews

pogostiks 21 March 2008

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.

forcex 8 July 2000

Fmovies: Performances, direction, cinematography are all first rate. The only real flaw is an uneconomical script. Julia Roberts has been lambasted for this part yet I doubt she has ever acted with more believability. You could say her beauty is, perhaps, a hindrance here but...

lee_eisenberg 7 January 2007

I usually don't like Julia Roberts. She focuses way too much on looking perfect and that dominates her movies. But she plays a different kind of role in "Mary Reilly". As Dr. Jekyll's (John Malkovich) maid getting seduced by both him and Mr. Hyde, she gives the impression of someone trapped in Victorian England wondering how to get out. And Mr. Hyde knows just how to seduce. Even knowing how evil Mr. Hyde is, you really grow to like him; he's a sort of rebel against Victorian mores and the class system.

I think that the best line in the movie is when Mary tells Dr. Jekyll about her father's (Michael Gambon) drinking problem; it was almost too self-referential! As it is, I think that Malkovich's performance in this movie might have been what made me view this movie positively, more than Julia Roberts's performance. But either way, you'll probably like it. It's not Stephen Frears's best movie, but still pretty interesting. Also starring Glenn Close.

lib-4 1 June 1999

Mary Reilly fmovies. 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.

evabbs 28 March 2002

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!

claudio_carvalho 7 January 2014

In the nineteen century, in London, the dedicated housemaid Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) is part of the staff under the command of the butler Mr. Poole (George Cole) that works for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich). Mary is a traumatized woman that was abused by her father when she was a child and very devoted to Dr. Jekyll. One day, he gathers Mr. Poole and the servants in a room and tells that his assistant Mr. Edward Hyde will be work in his laboratory with free access to the house. Mary Reilly and her mates are unsuccessful to see the mysterious Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll trusts on Mary Reilly and she helps him, delivering letters to the notorious Mrs. Farraday (Glenn Close) that owns a brothel to clean the mess that Mr. Hyde does in the city. Mary Reilly is seduced by the educated Dr. Jekyll and by the reckless and violent Mr. Hyde.

"Mary Reilly" is a dramatic and romantic view of the classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through the eyes of a housemaid. The plot is developed in slow pace and is not exactly an horror movie and maybe this is the reason that many viewers did not like this movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo de Mary Reilly" ("The Secret of Mary Reilly")

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