This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) is the lowly chambermaid in the home of Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich). She is one of several servants and he is alone. He is experimenting in his lab and claims to have made a breakthrough to Mary. He announces a new visitor Edward Hyde is coming. He develops a closer relationship with Mary over the objections of the butler Mr. Poole. She reveals her abused past. He sends her to deliver a letter in secret to whorehouse madam Mrs. Farraday (Glenn Close) who agrees to rent a room to Mr. Hyde.It's all gray, dull, and flat. There is no tension and no thrills. There is definitely no mystery as the story unfolds inevitably. This is very boring. This has an old fashion Gothic horror style. The movie keeps going and going with the same flat unrelenting tone. Roberts is doing a lot of deer-in-the-headlights acting which only adds to the dull, flat feel.

I initially came across this film when I found out it was at one stage planned to be a Winona Ryder/Tim Burton vehicle, and I have to sat I was so impressed by it that it is now one of my favorite films.With a bit of research I got the idea that this was a bad stage in Julias career, but I have to say I have never seen her better than she is in this. Her performance is just astounding, she has thus innocence and vulnerability that I never thought I'd see coming from her, she embodies the character extremely well, so well that it would have been a crime to see anyone else in the role. John Malkovich ramps up the creepy factor in this movie, his performance is also just stellar, he is truly terrifying in the scenes where he is Jekyll.Another thing I like is that this is such a great retelling of the Jekyll/ Hyde story, it's the best one I've ever seen, I think one big advantage it has is that its told from an onlookers perspective and not from an unknown or first person perspective.The cinematography is wonderful, the constant shade of grey and the overlying layer of fog both help to create the dark and moody atmosphere. I think it's definitely a movie fans of the story would enjoy and also people who aren't so familiar with it.Top notch Gothic horror that deserves to be seen....

This film tells the story of the chambermaid who worked for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Thankfully, this turgid mess bombed at the box office so we were spared sequels about Dracula's chauffeur, Frankenstein's tax attorney and the Wolfman's proctologist.Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) works as a maid for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich) in 19th century London. I kid you not when I state that this movie essentially follows Mary around while she does her household chores and every so often we get a scene that peeks in on the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde. If you don't know what that story's about, go down to the damn library and check out the book or watch one of the 37,000,000,000 other versions of the tale that have been committed to film. Basically, this thing is a Cliff's Notes version of Jekyll and Hyde, crossed with a documentary on the brutal drudgery of 19th century working class Britons, mixed with a Lifetime movie about a woman overcoming her memories of fatherly abuse.The heart of Mary Reilly is supposed to be about the attraction Mary feels for both Jekyll and Hyde and the affection they feel in return. A big problem is that it's hard to believe any man being lovestruck by this pale-faced woman with Conan O'Brien eyebrows. Julia Roberts is deliberately stripped of most of the beauty artifice that props up her appearance in other films and the audience is undeniably confronted with the fact that Roberts is not that pretty. She has very distinct features that need to be accommodated on screen and that doesn't happen here.Another defining negative about this film is very poor acting jobs by three big stars. Roberts intermittently adopts an Irish accent that rivals Kevin Costner's dialect in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for its "now you hear it, now you don't" quality. John Malkovich does worse than sleepwalk through his double role, even giving Edward Hyde an extremely pronounced limp early in the film which completely disappears later on. Either Malkovich and director Stephen Frears both forgot about the limp or Malkovich just got tired of doing it and Frears couldn't make him. Glenn Close is almost as bad as the owner of a London brothel. Her entire performance consists of giving her character an Elvis lip curl.The bottom line is that Mary Reilly is a movie about an uninteresting woman who stands still while an amazing story happens around her. The idea of telling a famous tale from the perspective of a minor character isn't a bad one. A movie about the London cop trying to track down and capture Edward Hyde sounds good to me. The trick is the minor character actually has to do something important in the story. Mary Reilly simply hovers and watches like the boring person on a reality show.Unless you're dying to view YET ANOTHER crappy adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, skip this film.

I really like the fact that the film is told from Mary Reilly's point of view. Not only hers, but everyone else's too, like the naive servants, the furious Mrs. Faraday (the brothel mistress). Mary Reilly - the character - also has a disturbing, traumatizing background story and at some point Mr. Hyde gives a pretty heavy psychological spin on it. It's never elaborated on or seems ignored even, but this suits the tone of the film. Insinuating things often hits harder than explaining them. Through some of the characters, some of the possible little script flaws (or plot holes) get solved. For instance, doesn't anybody notice that Dr. Jekyll and his assistant Mr. Hyde look very much alike? Only Hyde looks younger. Sure people notice this, but one of the servants goes about assuming that Mr. Hyde might very well be a product of Jekyll's student days. As a bright student, Jekyll was popular with the ladies. And since Jekyll never got married, if he would have had a son... in those days it was even a sin to merely speak about or suggest a thing like this.I like John Malkovich's performance a lot and it's clear that him & Stephen Frears both understood very well what they wanted to achieve here. The good doc Jekyll (whom is looked upon in high regards by his servants) is far from kosher to the bone himself (we get hints at how he conducts his research and we know he's a regular client at Mrs. Faraday's house of pleasure). While on the other hand, Mr. Hyde as the savage beast, has his scarce moments of weakness for Mary Reilly. See what I'm getting at? And when looking at it from Mary's side, she unwillingly brings out the worst in the best, and the best in the worst, so to speak. Frears & Malkovich and screenwriter Christopher Hampton added shades of gray to a classic, one too many times told story that is basically just about black & white. The film got me really interested in reading the source novel it was based on. To see how it compares the film.What else is there to like? Enough, I think. Phillipe Rousselot's wonderful cinematography. A captivating musical score by George Stenton. As much as it's a character-driven story, it does feature a handful moments of the grotesque. Glenn Close gets decapitated. Dr. Jekyll is seen on the street repeatedly kicking a little girl in the stomach. An engrossing scene that shows how slaughtered meat for consumption is being traded in the streets, followed by an analogy towards the trade of human organs for the sake of science. Not sure whom all were responsible for these sequences -- I understand that Frears, for example, never intended the film to end like it did, with that climactic transformation sequence. But said sequences are a graphic reminder of the fact that we are watching a horrific story. At any rate, I didn't think they hurt the film. They injected it with the necessary dosage of brutality.The set design is marvelous and Dr. Jekyll's laboratory - or at least the way of getting there - is cleverly structured (as it helps crafting the suspense of a certain scene in a brilliant manner). The 19th century London setting works convincing, but we don't get to see much of it. The blocking & framing makes sure we usually only see one part of a street at a time. And to add to this claustrophobic & dark notion this film has, most scenes take place on indoors sets. But also these sets are put to great use. To Mary Reilly, the doctor's mansion starts off as a safe haven, a place offering a good job and a possible better future. But it doesn't take long for this house to get infested with the evil of Mr. Hyde's presence at night. So much even, that it starts to haunt her dreams. This shift in tone happens gradually, with a slow but impeccable pace.Truth be told, to me Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde always seemed a very simplistic story to tell. At least in the classic version as it got famous. It's good source material, yes, but Frears & Hampton managed to squeeze a much more interesting film out of it. Which probably could have even been a lot better if the producing studio at the time wasn't so concerned about how it would do at the box office.Voilà, that's it for what I like about this film.Notice that I didn't mention Julia Roberts' performance. It's very down-toned, as it should be. She is there not to be noticed, her character demands it and so does the story. And while she does have a lot of screen time, she doesn't do much, so there's just not much to say about her acting. But you can always 'see' the wheels of her character's thoughts grinding, as she is the only one who's trying to fathom what's going on. From all the servants, she's the only one that knows how to read. Dr. Jekyll discovers this very early on, when he spots her reading a book in his library. This, of course, titillates the good doc's mind. And that's the point in the film, as soon as it comes, where you instantly realize this is going to take a turn for the worse. In that moment, there's a harmless thing between them that will inevitably unleash unspeakable horrors. And this 'harmless thing' even is personified throughout the whole film. It goes by the name of Mary Reilly.A very interesting adaptation. And a good film, full stop.