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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

Doctor Jekyll review – risible horror leaves Eddie Izzard no place to Hyde

Eddie Izzard as Dr Nina Jekyll.
‘An unforgivably lazy picture’: Eddie Izzard as Dr Nina Jekyll. Photograph: Amanda Searle

Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella and Hammer Films (a purveyor of enjoyably lurid 1950s and 60s gothic pulp) get an enforced revamp with this lamentable, frequently laughable contemporary reimagining of the Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Eddie Izzard gurns and preens as reclusive pharmaceuticals mogul Dr Nina Jekyll. So much scenery is chewed up, they might as well have cast an industrial woodchipper in the central role.

Scott Chambers plays Rob, the ex-con former addict who takes a job as Nina’s live-in assistant in her cursed-looking mansion. Both, it turns out, have secrets. It’s an unforgivably lazy picture, a film that feels as though it was written in crayon and edited with an axe.

Watch a trailer for Doctor Jekyll.
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