gavin6942 A housemaid (Julia Roberts) falls in love with Dr. Jekyll (John Malkovich) and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde (John Malkovich).Stephen Frears, an excellent director, cast two very big names and put them in a twist of the Jekyll and Hyde story. This is not a horror tale, and the violence and gore are kept to a minimum. In some sense it is a love story, but only in the most general of terms. More accurately, it is a woman who is loyal to her employer.The strangest thing about this is how little they tried to make the two halves look different. When Hyde comes out, he is still obviously Malkovich. How can they not notice? Someone remarks that they bear a resemblance, but it is much more than that.

jacobjohntaylor1 This a great movie. It is based on the book Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. Told from the prospective of one of Dr.Jekyll servants. This movie as great acting. It also has a great story line. It also as great special effects. This is a story of how a Doctor discovers that man has two souls and good one and evil one. He tries to serpent the two. Soul he creates a formula that brings out his evil side. Then it starts to take him over. This one of the best remake ever. It is one of the scariest movies you will ever see. It is very intense. There are not very many movie scarier then Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (1931). This is one of them. I need more lines and I am running out of thing to say.

T Y I believe it was Ray Pride who wrote the classic line "Mary Reilly is like a painting... only slower." Yeah, the pacing is not good. Yeah, Julia Roberts is a slight problem. But there are three more massive problems with the movie.1) Viewpoint - Telling the story of Hamlet through the eyes of Rosencranz and Gildenstern? Sounds promising! Telling the story of Oz through the eyes of the Wicked Witch? Could be interesting! Telling the story of Dr Jekyll (y'know? ...the exciting character!!) through an extremely uninteresting servant too timid to have a viewpoint? Um, no. No very much. No times a hundred. This device holds no potential.2) Malkovich - Characters in the movie are supposed to believe Malkovich is two people. But this guy can't be bothered to develop one role in a normal movie, let alone two characters here; horrible, horrible piece of casting! He gives the same contemptuous, bland, disinterested, passive-aggressive performance he's been overpaid for, for twenty years. He fails to modulate anything an actor has under his control, generating tedium on screen, and ennui in viewers.3) Familiarity - We know this story. If you haven't found a way to embroider it, you can't just prolong its only revelation (duality) for an hour and a half. Because it makes the characters seem severely dull-witted. No one has two identical-looking antagonists in their life who are never seen at the same time. Every moment is the same as the next.There's a belated spfx ending which is wildly out of place, and feels like the 25th attempt to save a movie. The combined talents of the three (Roberts, Malkovich & Frears) did not produce sparks, excitement or even a feeble puff of smoke.

Cristi_Ciopron For me, this was the only version that worked—of the few that I know. Very atmospheric. It also had a good notion of what it is that makes RLS's novel so interesting. So to me it's no surprise that "Reilly" was nowadays quite unsuccessful. More power to its fans!Mme Roberts' performance has here very fine qualities—qualities of restraint and self-effacing that work for the movie and also reveal in a very effective way Mme Roberts' high understanding of her art .She is very good.It also absolutely revealed to me Malkovich as the extremely fine actor that he is. There are, for me, two films that exquisitely showcase Malkovich's art—this "Jekyll", and a Tournier adaptation, made by a German director (The Ogre ,by Volker Schlöndorff). These are two movies that I enormously admire.They are strikingly achieved films,and also very good parts, and I much prefer them to Malkovich's roles in The Glass Menagerie (1987) ,Shadows and Fog (1992),Of Mice and Men (1992),Con Air (1997) ,Al Di Là Delle Nuvole (1995),Les Misérables,etc..Yet the best thing in this "Reilly" is its visionary nature and visionary sense—in the psychological sense. It has this surreal visionary gusto that I've appreciated the most. It plays like a film that sets itself up for something. I guess the famous critics couldn't reduce it to any political/_deconstructivist /academic agenda—"Reilly" is a mere vision—so it meant nothing to them! Fortunately, "Reilly" doesn't look mainstream in the Hollywoodian way—it really is of an independent, original conception. It's violent and attractive and intense and compact.The usual thesis is that Stevenson meant evil and good can cohabit in the same human individual. Yet Chesterton once rectified this and wrote: no, on the contrary, Stevenson obviously meant evil and good can't cohabit in the same person. The first will devour the second."Reilly" has some kind of a visionary life and liveliness. Also a force.