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If you hate your friends, make them watch this movie.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is a modern story loosely based on the Robert Louis Stevenson book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.  Whereas in the book, Stevenson ignited the reader’s imagination on the concepts of good vs. evil, the duality of the human mind, and what role civilization and law have upon the human animal, this movie strives to force the watcher to make it through the end without going off to do something more interesting.

The movie starts out with Hyde (played by Dougray Scott of Ever After “fame”) as Hyde picking up a hooker, taunting her, and finally killing her.  This death is portrayed without any gore and left me immediately under whelmed.  Scott wakes up as Jekyll and seems disoriented but not surprised.  When he goes home covered in hooker blood, his live-in maid seems upset, but not surprised.  A string of serial killings has been reported in the area, and Jekyll is not surprised, as he knows he’s been doing them as Mr. Hyde.

Jekyll asks his good friend Gabe Utterson (Tom Skerritt from Picket Fences and Alien) to hook him up with a lawyer.  Jekyll wants to admit to the crimes and go to jail.  The lawyer (Krista Bridges) says no to taking his case.  Then she says yes.  First, she doesn’t believe that he did it.  Finally she does.  She doesn’t believe he changes in Hyde initially.  Later she does.  There’s a trial and a ridiculously telegraphed twist ending that would make Rod Serling spin in his grave.

The scenes with no dialogue – of which there were many – could have been enhanced (and by extension, enhance the quality of the film) with the use of inner monologue narration from Jekyll.  Insight into the character and reflections on what Hyde was doing without apology to an outside listener would have brought the level of emotional connection up to at least mediocre from a starting point of nil.

My big question with updated stories that take place in modern times is that they ignore the existence and cultural mark of their source material.  It’s ridiculous how no one in the film says, “Gee, that’s kind of a funny.  There’s a doctor named Jekyll and he knows this lunatic named Hyde.  Kind of like that novel we all had to read in high school.”  The BBC series Jekyll also updated the Stevenson book, and not only acknowledged its original form and storyteller, it also integrated them into the plot so that it made sense to a rational human mind.  Shame on director Paolo Barzman and writer Paul B. Margolis for not even trying to think around this point.

The cinematography, music, editing, and Scott’s American accent are all terrible.  Tom Skerritt needs to get a new agent or stop choosing scripts to do in a Christopher-Walken-style (accepting any project someone gives him).  The consistencies in the film failed to hold together (i.e. Jekyll/Hyde’s green hulk-like eye change happened once, being hit by a bus doesn’t hurt Hyde but mace does, etc.).  The detectives on Hyde’s case come into the story out of nowhere and there is no way that Bridges as the lawyer could sneak a big hypodermic needle filled with ‘antidote” into jail for Scott’s Jekyll.

Mercifully, there is only one bonus feature on the DVD.  Unmercifully it is fifteen minutes of Dougray Scott (who’s sloping brow and jutting lower jaw make him look more prehistoric than a Geico caveman) exhibiting diarrhea of the mouth – expounding on his thoughts regarding the movie.  Every answer is an eternity of nothingness.  I’m not using hyperbole or exaggeration when I say that during the second answer he gives, I went to my bathroom and trimmed the hairs growing out of my nose.  This took a good five minutes, and when I got back into the den, I looked at the screen and exclaimed, “Dear God!  He’s still talking!”  I blank out on what I did during the final part of the Q&A because that is how mind numbingly interesting it was.

On a whole, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde seemed to me like a Dick Wolf rejected Law & Order episode that someone desperately tried to slap a classic horror veneer onto without thinking about whether or not they should.  Or were capable.  Or that any of us would be interesting in seeing it.  Remember kids, just say no to this movie.

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