Written by Richard Curtis and directed by Phillip Noyce, it's sentimental at times but still unmissable viewing.

| Oct 11, 2020

Mary and Martha is a work of fiction, and it's notably light on comic relief. But the real game-changer is that Curtis here tugged on the heart strings by putting his First World characters in the line of fire.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2020

Its story of loss, love, guilt, awakening and redemption -- while artfully shot, tightly written and well-acted -- ultimately served as a vehicle for a handful of familiar and uncomfortable facts about a disease.

| Oct 8, 2020

Mary is headstrong and abrasive, Martha matronly and warm, and the actresses' chemistry makes up for an earnest predictability in the storytelling.

| Oct 8, 2020

The remainder of the film is captivating, perhaps in part because it taps into humans' innate voyeurism, perhaps because Curtis props open our eyelids to the cause despite the film's missteps.

| Oct 8, 2020

It has an important statement to make, but any semblance of a story keeps getting interrupted by the filmmakers' need to remind you that malaria in Africa is really, really bad.

| Oct 8, 2020

While Curtis makes a point of making characters show their grief by gingerly stepping on each other's toes, Mary And Martha is more of a product of unwitting creative insensitivity than an apt reflection of it.

| Oct 8, 2020

I'm not ashamed to admit that, in the end, this earnest, oversimplified, well-acted piece -- shot beneath a dazzling African sun -- succeeded in bringing a tear to my eye. It also left me gasping for some genuine comic relief.

| Oct 8, 2020

The film grows in power, with both Swank and Blethyn engaging a viewer's sympathies through the force of their performances apart and eventually together after a chance meeting.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 8, 2020

[A] sentimental, misjudged, one-note clunker, that's yet another wide misstep by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank.

| Original Score: D | Oct 8, 2020

It's a good message, an important message, one worth repeating as Curtis does each year with Comic Relief and as he does here. It's just too bad the movie isn't better.

| Oct 8, 2020

Mary and Martha -- a moving return to intimate form for HBO -- represents an emotionally stirring triumph.

| Oct 8, 2020

The malaria story, it seems to say, is filmable only if the central figures are white and it is larded up with the kind of button-pushing that television dramas thrive on. The Africans in this film are largely props for Ms. Swank to hold.

| Oct 8, 2020

Mary and Martha is a little film with a big heart. While well acted and artfully shot, it suffers from message movie traps, which isn't to say I wasn't swept up in its good intentions.

| Apr 26, 2013

While Swank and Blethyn make everything they're in more remarkable for their presence, the movie plays more like a based-on-fact Lifetime flick than an HBO work of fiction.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 22, 2013

Mary and Martha is fictional, but the characters have the blandness you generally find in docudramas.

| Apr 19, 2013