Review – Mary Reilly

This has got to be one of the all-time most unfortunate proportions of money spent to crappiness of production. The studio must have shelled out the big bucks to get the likes of Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, Glenn Close and several other recognizable faces to star in this dreary filming of Valerie Martin’s retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the perspective of one of Jekyll’s maids. Nobody is exactly at the top of his or her game, but Roberts is particularly bad. She seems to be trying to pass off a look of constant pale terror for depth of character, and her coming-and-going accent makes her sound like she suffered brain damage after being clubbed over the head repeatedly with an IPA guidebook. Overall this appears to be an attempt to re-create the feeling of serving as a 19th century domestic worker in England by subjecting the audience to nearly two hours of cinematic drudgery. Too bad, too. The concept had potential. See if desperate