Mary Reilly (1996)

Film: Mary Reilly (1996)

Stars: Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, Michael Sheen, George Cole, Glenn Close, Michael Gambon

Director: Stephen Frears

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about The Pelican Brief, which capped off an incredible run of near-constant hits for Julia Roberts following Pretty Woman.  But by 1994, the public was losing some of its initial infatuation with Roberts.  Part of this was due to the public feeling like her romantic life was too flighty (this was not a new criticism when it started to be levied at another global superstar, Taylor Swift, in recent years), with her reportedly jilting Kiefer Sutherland days before their wedding (something Roberts has claimed was not the case, and that their relationship was done long before the scheduled nuptials), and a short-lived marriage with country singer Lyle Lovett, ten years her senior (and not conventionally attractive in the way that Roberts is, something I only point out because it was a source of fascination at the time in the way that Arthur Miller & Marilyn Monroe was during their courtship).  Roberts was a mainstay on the front pages of supermarket tabloids, and everyone in America had an opinion on the actress in the way that Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor had endured decades earlier.

But celebrity always invites scrutiny of your love life, and studios would've been fine with this had Roberts been able to deliver cinematic hits during this era, but that didn't happen.  Her headlining work in Something to Talk About, Michael Collins, & I Love Trouble were all greeted with yawns by the public (there's a famous clip that recirculates every few years of Roberts talking to David Letterman where she discusses an anonymous leading man who has a tirade against a director, threatening to run him over with a car, that pretty much everyone agrees is Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble...a film whose legendary production where the two leads were at each other's throats is far more discussed than the actual movie itself which is weirdly the first Julia Roberts movie I think I saw in theaters).  Even all-star pictures like Pret-a-Porter and Everyone Says I Love You (directed by Woody Allen, who was practically getting his actresses Oscar nominations annually at this point) didn't make a peep with the public or awards bodies.  None felt more like a five-alarm fire more so, though, for Roberts than today's film Mary Reilly.  A notorious flop, perhaps the biggest of her career (it'd win her her second of three Razzie Award nominations to date, and the only one for an outright box office loser, likely only being spared a "win" because this was the year of Demi Moore in Striptease), it had people questioning her as a bankable leading woman, particularly as actresses like Meg Ryan & Sandra Bullock were rising to be far more consistent box office champs.  Today, before she gets her comeback, we have to talk about Mary Reilly.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Mary Reilly (Roberts), the young maid of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Malkovich), a kindly-but-enigmatic doctor who runs a quiet household staff and largely keeps to himself.  Dr. Jekyll takes an interest in Mary, particularly her scars which we learn later are a symbol of the sexual and physical abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her father (Gambon).  Dr. Jekyll has taken on an "assistant" and because she is in his confidence, Mary starts to run errands for him, frequently to a brothel owned by Mrs. Faraday (Close), which shocks but also arouses young Mary.  We soon learn that his assistant Edward Hyde (also Malkovich) is causing murder-and-mayhem all over London, eventually killing Mrs. Faraday when she attempts to blackmail him, but because of a curiosity (and lust) toward Mary, he has spared her, and she witnesses first-hand his destructive nature, and eventually learns the truth that both men are one-and-the-same, a science experiment gone horribly wrong (in a really weird CGI scene where a baby is seen crawling underneath Malkovich's skin).  The film ends with Mary, after confronting her father and realizing she can be freed of her own accursed childhood, leaving behind these two men, both dead at their own hands, possibly inspired by Mary's goodness, and going out keeping their horrible secret.

For those who are familiar with the classic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my favorites), you'll notice only a few similarities with the source material.  There are a few characters from that that stay here (not just the title characters, but also the stern butler Mr. Poole and Sir Danvers Carew, here played by future Oscar nominee Ciarin Hinds), but this is instead a direct adaptation of Valerie Martin's bestseller of the same name (in Stevenson's original tale, the maid character isn't even named, though in both film & novella she knows the true nature of Danvers Carew's murder).  This disappointment will be evident if you're hoping for something ghastly like that, as this movie is rarely scary, though it is grotesque.  It functions more as a melodrama in parts, with Mary never feeling particularly in danger, and more a pawn in a boring game of chess between dual melodramatic performances from Malkovich.

Roberts is badly miscast here, though one could argue not the worst performance in the film (that would be given by 8-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close, in a role so horrible you would be forgiven for thinking she was being blackmailed into undertaking it).  Roberts' Irish accent here sits alongside Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, Tom Cruise in Far and Away, and Chris O'Donnell in Circle of Friends as one of the worst in cinematic history (that she did another Irish film in 1996, Michael Collins, proves her agent deserved to be fired).  She is dour, one of those dramatic actors who think that playing an introverted character means that you lose all charisma & grace, and plays Mary as if she's on novocaine.  It's a really bad performance, one I suspect Roberts undertook because she wanted Hollywood to take her more seriously as an actress and stop forcing her to do rom-com's, but as a result of doing this part, she basically would have to go back to playing the types of comedic roles that made her a star...but in a nice twist, this would work, and finally win Roberts the respect she felt the industry had denied her.  While other actresses that rose to fame alongside her like Demi Moore & Andie MacDowell couldn't seem to get their careers together in the wake of a mid-1990's slowdown, Julia Roberts was about to have one of the most impressive career comebacks in Hollywood history.