Mary and Max

Play trailer

2:03

Mary and Max

2009

1h 32m

Drama

Comedy

Animation

Play Trailer

Watchlist

Watchlist

Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

96%

Tomatometer

67 Reviews

92%

Popcornmeter

25,000+ Ratings

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

Watch on Fandango at Home

Stream Now

Critics Consensus

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

Read Critics Reviews

Kate Muir

The 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

John Walsh

Independent (UK)

It's a 20-year story that absorbs and beguiles, despite the ugly subject matter.

Rated: 4/5

Oct 22, 2010

Full Review

David Griffiths

Subculture Entertainment

Films as brilliant as ‘Mary And Max’ don’t come along very often. If I had to grade it out of ten I would give it one hundred.

Rated: 5/5

Oct 29, 2024

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

Read all reviews

m s

The recent "snail" movie was good, but this one is so much better!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

08/26/25

Full Review

TROYS S

Mary And Max is original, personal, funny and moving; a film of warmth and compassion from a major artist.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

08/12/25

Full Review

Tim S

“Mary and Max” is a touching, humorous , dark, stop motion animated movie directed by Adam Elliot that tells the story of a long communicative pen pal relationship that started in 1976. Following the story of a lonely 8 year old girl, Mary from Australia, who one day randomly selects a name and address from a New York telephone directory and sends a letter. Max a 40 year old obese loner who lives in the suburbs of Manhattan suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. Max who had never had a friend other than an imaginary friend one day receives a strange letter that immediately upon reading sent him into a state of panic and anxiety. After a period of calm Max decides to reply to the letter and thus begins a rather strange exchange of information from two lonely and abused people both Worlds and ages apart. “Mary and Max” explores loneliness, disability and abuse with humour and a clever incisive script with no fear to address obvious obstacles like age, alcohol dependency and bullying. Heart warming, upsetting and moving with dry humorous narration by the legendary Barry Humphries.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

08/06/25

Full Review

Adrían C

Es impresionante como en una película animada meten a un personaje con asperger y una niña solitaria y la convierten en una maravillosa obra maestra del stop motion. Ojalá haya una segunda película

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

07/06/25

Full Review

Oaklee D

A charming film that is heart warming and emotional. Adam Elliot knocks it out of the ball park yet again.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

06/25/25

Full Review

Miles C. S

This movie proves the brilliance of Adam Elliot (writer and director). Somehow Adam Elliott took the simple and mundane premise of an Australian girl becoming pen-pals with a New Yorker that has asperger syndrome and turned it into a movie I couldn’t stop watching. Movies like this restore my faith in cinema.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/09/25

Full Review

Read all reviews

Read More

Read Less

POST RATING

WRITE A REVIEW

EDIT REVIEW

Adam Elliot

Director

Toni Collette

Mary Daisy Dinkle

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Max Jerry Horovitz

Eric Bana

Damien

Barry Humphries

Narrator

Bethany Whitmore

Young Mary

Anomalisa

92%

71%

Anomalisa

Watchlist

TRAILER

for Anomalisa

My Life as a Zucchini

99%

89%

My Life as a Zucchini

Watchlist

The Oranges

30%

32%

The Oranges

Watchlist

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

69%

50%

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Watchlist

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

Mary and Max: Trailer 2

2:03

Mary and Max: Trailer 1

2:19

View more videos

View more photos

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
Producer: Melanie Coombs
Screenwriter: Adam Elliot
Production Co: Melodrama Pictures
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Animation
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 27, 2016
Runtime: 1h 32m

Most Popular at Home Now