Mary and Max

Mary and Max is an Australian stop-motion animated film about a correspondence that grows between two people who have little in common and live on opposite sides of the world. Mary is a lonely eight-year-old in the suburbs of Melbourne; Max is a 44-year-old man in New York. Their letters begin by chance and continue across many years, as both navigate family, work, health and the ordinary difficulties of their lives.

Adam Elliot wrote and directed the film, his second feature after the short Harvie Krumpet and the middle work in a career that later continued with Memoir of a Snail. Melanie Coombs produced it for Melodrama Pictures with backing from Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Icon. The voice cast includes Toni Collette as Mary, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Max, Barry Humphries as the narrator, Eric Bana, Bethany Whitmore and Renée Geyer, among 39 credited cast members.

The film was released in 2009 and runs 92 minutes. Made for about 8 million US dollars, it returned roughly 2 million worldwide, a modest result for a stop-motion production. Its reputation rests instead on how it has been received: on IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from around 201,000 votes, on TMDB 7.9 from over 2,300, while critics gave it 8.3 from 67 reviews, placing it slightly above the audience scores.