ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996            TAG: 9602260010
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: ROD DREHER FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL 

'MARY REILLY' IS HORRID, AND YET OH-SO-DULL

``Mary Reilly'' is a horrid, coughed-up hairball of a movie, a macabre indulgence in wretched gloom and repressed sadomasochism. For all the reptilian vileness of the story, it somehow manages to be as dull and leaden as cold, unsalted oatmeal.

This is the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as told from the point of view of a timid chambermaid, Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts). The movie opens in a nameless, fog-shrouded British city in the 1890s, with Roberts scrubbing the sidewalk.

Julia Roberts as an Irish washerwoman? Oh Julia, Julia, Julia, you've gone and gotten yourself in trouble again, and that brogue you apparently picked up in a box of Lucky Charms isn't going to save you, either. Mary's employer, Dr. Jekyll (John Malkovich, in yet another slimy, toad-in-aspic role), approaches and asks her to explain the weird herringbone scars on her neck and arms, but she declines.

It's a wonder Jekyll can see the scars. It's a wonder anybody can see anything. It's always dark and dank in this movie, as if it were lit by a flashlight and shot through a linty cheesecloth. There are three colors on the screen: light gray, dark gray and black - oh, and red, but that's only when somebody gets ripped, or they visit the slaughterhouse to collect organs for secret potions.

As we know, Dr. Jekyll is up to no good in that la-boar-a-tree of his (the British pronunciation of ``laboratory'' is the only feint Malkovich makes in the way of a non-American accent), but simpleton Mary can't sense that anything's wrong. Early in the movie, she confesses to Jekyll the origin of the scars: As a girl, her abusive daddy once locked her in a cabinet with a hungry rat. Lovely.

Later on, upon one of her meetings with the feeble Dr. Jekyll's dashing, devilish ``assistant,'' Mr. Hyde, she comes across his gruesome sketchbook, so death-obsessed and sadistic that it must've been done on an NEA grant. Thanks to a bloody trail, by now we've figured out that Mr. Hyde likes his sex extremely rough. And our quiet little Mary discovers within herself a masochistic lech for the guy. We spend much of the movie wondering if Hyde will rape and dismember her.

Mary Reilly

**

A Tri-Star release playing at the Salem Valley 8. 118 min. Rated R for gore and macabre subject matter.

LENGTH: Medium:   53 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  Julia Roberts is the not-very-Irish title character and 
          John Malkovich is Dr. Jeykll in "Mary Reilly". color.