Click here to copy URL

Mary Shelley

2017

Haifaa Al-Mansour

Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, Maisie Williams ...

6.2

4,339

Drama. Romance She will forever be remembered as the writer who gave the world Frankenstein. Raised by a renowned philosopher father (Stephen Dillane) in 18th-century London, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Elle Fanning) is a teenage dreamer determined to make her mark on the world when she meets the dashing and brilliant poet Percy Shelley (Douglas Booth). So begins a torrid, bohemian love affair marked by both passion and personal tragedy that will ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Deborah Young The Hollywood Reporter	"A passionate film about a woman’s ideas (...) Despite some weaknesses in the story and pacing, Al Mansour and actress Elle Fanning achieve a lot of good things."	POS
United States	Andrew Barker Variety	"Impressively shot and suffused with a righteous feminist fire, the film is undercut by a confused and clunky script and a fundamental lack of thematic focus"	NEU
United States	Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist	"A film desperately in need of an electric charge, 'Mary Shelley' is simply another cinematic corpse on the table."	NEG
United States	Steve Pond The Wrap	"While 'Mary Shelley' has its stirring moments, much of it is coming from Shelley’s own prose, it also tends to lose the thread amid the occasionally overblown melodrama."	NEU
United States	Susan Wloszczyna rogerebert.com	"A tepid soap-operatic battle of the sexes that drains passion rather than enflames it (...) Mary Shelley and her monster fable deserve better (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"	NEG
United States	Jake Cole Slant	"The film's final act (...) falls back into standard biopic rhythms (...) [They] abandon their fruitful investigation of belief systems in favor of a simplistic articulation of Mary's inspiration"	NEU
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"This account is plausible and moving, at once a defense of genre fiction and of female creativity."	POS
United Kingdom	Allan Hunter Screendaily	"The result is an intelligent balance between romantic drama and literary biography (...) The film’s screenplay relishes the way in which words can arouse, provoke, and seduce"	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Al-Mansour captures the pathos and pity of the Frankenstein story while eliciting an insouciant and poised performance from her star (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Geoffrey Macnab The Independent	"For all its craft and elegance, this account of the origins of Frankenstein never really comes to life (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United Kingdom	Charlotte O'Sullivan London Evening Standard	"The material is fascinating, but thanks to a lumpy script, 'Mary Shelley' often feels like TV fodder (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
Ireland	Deirdre Molumby entertainment.ie	"There is much to like in this biopic (...) [It] moves along briskly enough and is well-written (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"	POS
Ireland	Paul Whitington Irish Independent	"Fanning seems stiff and miscast as the fearless Mary, and the portrayals of Shelley and Byron are frankly ridiculous (...) [A] clunky, overwritten film (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG
Ireland	Donald Clarke Irish Times	"Though there are few (ahem) electric jolts, al-Mansour’s film passes the time pleasantly in the style of posh Sunday night telly (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.