| Plot: One-hour photo lab veteran Sy Parrish has no social life and obsesses over the Yorkin family via their family photos. Once Sy finds out the Yorkins aren't as squeaky-clean as he thought, he finds himself going a bit postal. |
| Review: I consider Robin Williams to be pretty damned annoying. From his stand-up performances to his role in "Good Morning, Vietnam", Williams has been a constant irritation. Hell, even during Jumanji he managed to annoy me. With One Hour Photo, that's changed. Williams does a good (but not great) performance as Sy Parrish: neurotic milquetoast extraordinaire. It's a love-hate relationship between me and the character Sy. One the one hand, he is a sympathetic character with his dead-end job and dismal social life. On the other hand, I just wanted to slap him for being such a damn milquetoast. Despite what I've said, the movie's all about Sy (except for the Yorkins) and Williams' performance is where all the money shots are at. From his wry smile, his balding hair, and even the way he fixes his glasses, Robin's performance is dead-on and believable. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the rest of the cast. Quite frankly, I didn't care what happened to the Yorkins, it should've been all about Sy I tell you. The problem isn't that the actors for Mina and Will Yorkin are bad, it's just that they're so bland that it's hard to take them seriously (especially during the argument sequence). I might've let their performances go if they had been lesser characters, but they are the focus of Sy's obsession and I would expect them to commit, dammit. One Hour Photo seems to be a bunch of movies sewn together. We have parts where it's surreal with the tweaked scenes of the SavMart (too many shots of white walls; makes me think I'm in a hospital), and two dream sequences I won't spoil for you. We also have the "slow burn" with Sy stalking the family (ex: "bumping" into them at the mall), we have a dash of Psycho in the finale, and lastly we have a bit of a character study. To be honest, each part wasn't really fleshed out enough for me and the Psycho aspect of the film was the most dominant. In the end I liked the character study aspect of the movie best with Sy talking about all the "do's and don'ts" of working at the photo lab and his knowledge of all the photo shop regulars (it's all about the amateur pornographer guy). The fact that hammered home that all these aspects weren't fleshed out is it's low running time, clocking in at less then 90 minutes. This movie could've easily been two hours and all the aspects worked on a bit. Even though the movie's a bit jumbled, it still comes together as a solid film worth checking out once with it's unique style (whitewashed everything) and strong performance by Williams. |
| Rating: **1/2 |
| Review by Jim |
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