Mary and Max

2009

1 hr. 32 min.

Drama

Comedy

Animation

TRAILER

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List

95%

66 Reviews

Tomatometer

92%

25,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

A lonely Australian girl (Toni Collette) and an elderly Jewish man (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in New York develop an unlikely friendship through letters.

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Critics Consensus

Mary and Max is a lovingly crafted, startlingly inventive piece of animation whose technical craft is equaled by its emotional resonance.

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Logan D

A lonely adolescent girl reaches out to a random person in New York and finds Max, a Jewish atheist, and become pen pals. A remarkably human story of love, life, and friendship. I had no idea that was Hoffman but so happy to enjoy one more performance by the late actor. It's a bleak tale populate with the flavor of reality. Very heavy for an animated film. Highly recommended.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

04/19/24

Full Review

Kyle M

Stop-motion Claymation are considerably jewel gems with dedicated patience in the painstaking craft, boosting the storyteller's compelling directorial vision as realized magnum opus. This unique caricature-designed dramedy provides generally charming flair over its societal satire with amusing observations balanced with harsh reality and heartened by the well-cast performances, even if mildly accepted whilst discomforted over its occasional bleakness and uncanny weirdness. (B+)

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

04/11/24

Full Review

Gunter M

A genuine work of art!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/21/24

Full Review

Kenji T

I watched this sick at 1am and it had me in tears by the end.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/17/24

Full Review

X O

What a complex and sad film. I live in Australia and I totally get how the director writer has shown what Australia is like. Life can be that empty for most people. Especially in Melbourne and Victoria. It's so sad. It's also a tragedy even in the film that Max can be so irate that someone would write a book about him and hope to solve Asperger syndrome. One would think they would be honoured. It's so sad. It's also incredible how much work went into this film. That doing it and stop motion takes so much longer than with actors. Maybe it was cheaper but the cast is international. Maybe they did it more out of love than money. I read it took more than a year just for the stop motion graphics alone. It's an incredible amount of work. But it's so sad. Just so sad. This emptiness of life. For so many people. Asperger's or not. Just so sad. Five stars without a doubt for the work that went into it. But it's just so sad. So meaningless. After all that.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

12/30/23

Full Review

Jodie A

Maybe my favorite animate movie

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

12/13/23

Full Review

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Adam Elliot

Director

Toni Collette

Mary Daisy Dinkle

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Max Jerry Horovitz

Eric Bana

Damien

Barry Humphries

Narrator

Bethany Whitmore

Young Mary

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Mary and Max: Trailer 2

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Mary and Max: Trailer 1

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Kate Muir

Times (UK)

This clay animation feels as if it was written by the early Woody Allen. Actually the genius behind it is Adam Elliot, who wrote, designed and directed this eccentric, wryly funny story.

Rated: 4/5

Jun 16, 2014

Full Review

Mark Fisher

Sight & Sound

Ultimately, Mary and Max is about correspondence and lack of correspondence, about how our images and fantasies about others fail to match up to what they are like, and about the constitutive gaps and misfirings in any communicational practice.

Jun 18, 2012

Full Review

Tim Robey

Daily Telegraph (UK)

Elliot is a talent eccentric enough to make Nick Park look like an office drone, and the serious sadness underpinning his vision only makes the humour work better.

Rated: 4/5

Oct 22, 2010

Full Review

Brian Eggert

Deep Focus Review

The ugly duckling characters share thoughts of anxiety, addiction, depression, and feelings of severe displacement within the world. This is dark and very heavy, but very Harold and Maude stuff.

Rated: 3.5/4

Aug 30, 2023

Full Review

Guillem Martinez Oya

Cinematismo

A beautiful story of friendship, forgiveness, love, and humanity although the differences. A humanistic story. [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: 4/5

Mar 6, 2021

Full Review

Daniel Gumble

CineVue

A film of astonishing beauty, Mary and Max is undoubtedly one of the films of the year.

Rated: 5/5

Nov 6, 2018

Full Review

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Synopsis

A lonely Australian girl (Toni Collette) and an elderly Jewish man (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in New York develop an unlikely friendship through letters.

Director: Adam Elliot
Executive Producer: Iain Canning, Mark Gooder, Paul Hardart
Screenwriter: Adam Elliot
Production Co: Melodrama Pictures
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Animation
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 27, 2016

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