Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

HotToastyRag Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman play a young couple who have had a one-night stand. The entire movie takes place during the dreaded and infamous "morning after", but many scenes are shown in flashback. While I usually criticize movies that rely on a nonlinear storyline and flashbacks, John Mortimer's script made some very interesting choices. While Mia and Dustin talk over breakfast, the conversation triggers a memory in one of them and cues a flashback. Some might find this disjointed, but others might see the realism in it. Words trigger memories, and before we know it, we're lost in another thought while real life continues.I didn't end up liking John and Mary; in fact, I found it pretty unpleasant. Both characters, in the awkward light of day, struggle to get to know each other, and often speak internally as a reaction to what they're learning. Since I'm a girl, I'm a little biased to be on Mia Farrow's side. Dustin Hoffman's internal monologues show that he isn't a nice person. He judges her, assumes her behavior, regrets her affection, and is disappointed when she doesn't immediately leave. Why is it entertaining to watch Mia try and get to know someone like that?

bkoganbing Dustin Hoffman was one role post his Oscar nominated Midnight Cowboy and Mia Farrow was one role away from her groundbreaking Rosemary's Baby when they were teamed for John And Mary. It's a film typical of the times, hook up first and then get to know each other. Mia's already got an involvement with a public official played by Michael Tolan who takes off on surreptitious rendezvous only to pack her off when word of the wife or any and all of his 6 kids are around. As for Hoffman he's got a cornucopia of issues most of them centering around his mother played here by Olympia Dukakis.John And Mary is chronicling the Sixties sexual revolution and at least what we see of Hoffman and Farrow's characters they would certainly be recognized by today's audience. Of course there weren't a lot of sexually transmitted diseases then, when they burst on the scene that made a lot of people act more prudently than John And Mary seem to.I never really got into the characters in this film. Still it's a good time snapshot of New York on the cusp of the Seventies.

ferbs54 "It's Not Your Mother's Love Story," the ads for "John and Mary" proclaimed, and I suppose that back in 1969, such indeed was the case. Telling the story of a one-night stand and the rainy day after, as the couple in question gets to know one another in the guy's spacious apartment at 52 Riverside Drive (in actuality, a 15-floor, redbrick building at 78th St. whose asking price today must be astronomical!), the film certainly must have engendered some controversy, back when. Fortunately, this sweet, realistic, adult slice of life, though certainly a product of its time, is not as dated as one might expect, and the tentative, uncertain steps that John and Mary (whose names we never know until the picture's final moments) take when learning about each other should seem familiar to even Gen Y'ers. This process of discovery is accomplished mainly through talk, but the viewer gets to know the two characters even better, via flashbacks, fantasy sequences and their voiced-over thoughts. In the leads, Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow are quite fine, and director Peter Yates brings his picture in with great sensitivity. The trio had recently participated in three enormously successful films--"The Graduate," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Bullitt," respectively--and while "John and Mary" is certainly a smaller film than those others, it is still of great interest. Hoffman and Farrow were immensely ingratiating screen presences at this early stage of their careers, and their unique pairing here makes this film something special. And speaking of early-career performances, "John and Mary" also features Tyne Daly, Cleavon Little and Olympia Dukakis, all in small but amusing parts. Anyway, it is my feeling that viewers of this film will gradually come to really like John and Mary, and root for them as a couple, and wish them many more nights together....

Hannah Nailor For most of the movie, quite frankly, I was so bored I dosed off about five times. Once the end of the movie neared, however, I started to like it. Of course, my DVR has a habit of only liking to record the first hour and twenty-five minutes of things, leaving me with the need to buy the movie just to skip everything and watch the last five minutes.A brief synopsis of the film would be that Dustin Hoffman, an emotionally challenged, furniture designer, and Mia Farrow, a worker at an art gallery, meet at a bar, then have sex, and spend the next day in his apartment, talking and thinking about themselves and their past-loves. Eventually, she leaves, never learning his name and him never learning hers and, they eventually meet again when he tries to find her, but discovers her in his own home instead, and they begin to date (thanks to my television, I'm guessing, so don't take my word for it).All together, the movie is strangely cohesive and an interesting view on the romance of two romantically blunt people.Buy the movie and WATCH it, I know I have to.