Mary Reilly

I blame Rachel.

She was on a Julia Roberts kick and added every Julia Roberts movie she hadn't seen to our Intelliflix queue.

So, quite a few weeks ago, Mary Reilly arrived in the mailbox. Not a movie that I would have ordered but since Rachel did, I thought I'd watch it with her. Today, she announces that she's not going to watch and we should just send it back.

Well, I can't just do that. It's been here so long, I have to at least watch it.

Hmmmmm.

It was rather tedious. Julia Roberts' accent was spotty, coming and going to the point that when it was on, it was distracting. Glenn Close was playing 101 Dalmatians' Cruella De Vil. (Both movies came out in 1996 so I'm not quite sure why the characters are so similar. Coincidence?) The weather was staged as monotonous, always so foggy and grey that you couldn't tell day from night. Now I'm as familiar as the next person with the term 'London fog' but I've also been to London and I can tell you from experience that the sun does actually shine in London, at least occasionally. I also understand the concept of setting the mood but I couldn't help thinking that a bit more light, judiciously placed, might have increased the ominous effect. I kept wondering how Mary's garden grew so quickly with no sunlight.

The overall concept was intriguing and kept me watching. I enjoy experiencing familiar stories from new perspectives, a la The Red Tent, Ahab's Wife, Gregory Maguire's novels, and right now March. Given that Mary Reilly was based on the novel by the same name, I may be adding another book to my to-read list (although I am a bit leery of the violence and gore).

Julia Roberts' performance, other than the accent difficulty, worked. She conveyed the pathos of the housemaid, reaching beyond herself yet always aware of her station.

John Malkovich was consistently creepy as Mr. Hyde and slightly more sympathetic as Dr. Jekyll. Those sorts of roles in movies must be fun and challenging for actors. Rather like Nicolas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off, a regrettable movie whose sole appeal was the whole Nicolas Cage playing John Travolta playing Nicolas Cage and vice versa thing.

I was interested to discover that the actor who played Mary's despicable father, Michael Gambon, is the same actor who replaced Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies.