Mary Reilly is set in Victorian London where Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts) is a housemaid to a Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich), he treats her & the rest of the servants well so she is relatively satisfied with her life. However, the calmness of the household is broken when Jekyll starts to stay out all night, he then says he will be collaborating with an assistant named Mr. Edward Hyde (John Malkovich) on his experiments & he should be treated as they treat him. Reilly meets Mr. Hyde who turns out to be a bit of a bad lad, meanwhile she has secret affections for her master Dr. Jekyll & soon realises they are both one & the same person...<br /><br />Directed by Stephen Frears I will openly admit right here & now that Mary Reilly bored me stiff, I honestly wanted to switch it off & go to sleep but in the fairness of this comment I decided to endure the final 40 minutes. The script by Christopher Hampton was based on the novel of the same name by Valerie Martin which itself obviously took inspiration from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who was it exactly that thought telling the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the perspective of his housemaid was a good idea? No offence but it sounds lame just thinking about it & sure enough the finished film is total crap that I personally found ways to hate it on many levels. From the absolute tedium of it all to the snails pace, to the awful romance between the main character's & the slushy sentimental drama to the fact it's one of the most boring films I've seen. I didn't like anyone in it, I didn't like the way the makers have taken a decent horror themed story & turned it into some horrible tedious romance & the lack of any horror or scares just sinks it without trace as far as I'm concerned. By the way did I mention it was boring?<br /><br />Director Frears does alright, to give the film credit where it deserves it the production design & look of it are fabulous. This would give any period Hammer Horror flick a good run for it's money, then again I suppose you can stage a film like this when you have nearly 50 million dollars as your budget. Apparently Tim Burton was set to direct this but decided to make Ed Wood (1994) instead, he might have actually injected some horror & mystery into the plot while still retaining the Gothic romance just like he did with his excellent Sleepy Hollow (1999). There's no real horror or scares in Mary Reilly, it has a nice fog enshrouded look but little else. Animal lovers beware, there are shots of eels being killed & skinned, being the old romantic that he is Mr. Hyde takes Mary to a slaughter house & again there are various animal carcasses strung up being skinned & gutted along with various organs in buckets & strewn across the floor. A man is also killed with the end of his walking cane in the films most violent scene.<br /><br />I am amazed this had a budget of near $50,000,000, it doesn't look like it although it's undeniably well staged & made. According to the IMDb Roberts got paid $10,000,000 for this, well she's terrible in it & her accent is awful. Shot on location in London, Scotland & in Pinewood studios. Generally speaking though there's a great cast here including Malkovich, George Cole, Kathy Staff, Michael Gombon & Glenn Close as the owner of a London whore house. At the 1997 Razzie Awards Mary Reilly was nominated for two, Julia Roberts as worst actress which she should have won & Stephen Frears as worst director which considering the film looks alright is maybe a bit harsh.<br /><br />Mary Reilly is in my opinion a terrible film & it's as simple & straight forward as that, when I watch a film I want to be entertained & not bored out of my skull & that's just the way it is. Thank god I saw it on cable TV & didn't spend any of my hard earned money on it. Mary Reilly sucks & she should have stuck to being a lowly servant girl.