Grungey odd-couple comedy/drama...but how true is it?

Rating: 7/10 (23 April 2009)

This is a hard movie to rate. I do remember seeing posters, I think, which stated that this movie was based on a true story. That wasn't enough to make me want to watch this movie. So, when the TV show "At the movies" reviewed it, and I saw some funny things, I decided to watch it. Watching this claymation movie, I had forgotten about the claims to truth of this movie, which made me think that this was a very strange movie indeed. It concerns the titular characters: Mary (voiced by Bethany Whitmore for the child, and by "The sixth sense"'s Toni Collette for the adult), a young Australian girl, and Max, an American middle-aged man (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman). Feeling bored one day, Mary randomly picks a name out of a phone book and writes to them...which is how she sends Max a letter. The movie airs the contents of their letters over many years, and displays each character's psychological state. Barry Humphries provides the narration in the movie. That element doesn't work particularly well in this movie, I don't think, as the story-book format can drag at times. The clip I saw on "At the movies" was indicative of the quality of the film...there are some genuinely funny exchanges between Mary and Max...laugh out loud funny at times. However, forgetting that this movie was supposedly based on a true story, I would think that the content of the movie was very odd. It was quite dark at times. For that reason, I don't think that this movie is appropriate for pre-teen children, even though it is made with claymation (plasticine figurines which are moved and photoed, to create the illusion of life in cinema). So, as I said, this movie is hard to rate. It is genuinely funny at times, but sometimes gloomily overwrought, which pegs it back a little. If this movie bares no relation to reality, then I'd give it 6/10. If there truth to it, I'd give it a score closer to 7/10. Did read an interview with the movie's maker, Adam Elliott, in a local suburban paper where I live (The Monash Leader, 14/04/2009, i.e. ten days ago), where Elliott admits that the movie is based on his penfriend-ship with an American when he, Elliott, was a child. On that basis, the high melodrama that you see in this movie with Mary doesn't really seem to be based on anything that Elliott himself experienced. On that basis I'd mark this movie down a bit...it's gloom seems unmotivated. I'll give it around 65/100.