Overall Rating
 Awesome: 53.73%
Worth A Look: 17.91%
Just Average: 16.42%
Pretty Crappy: 10.45%
Sucks: 1.49%
9 reviews, 80 user ratings
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| One Hour Photo |
by Spike
"A moving performance by Robin Williams - and little else."
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Sometimes an excellent score, flawless cinematography, and moving performance just can't overcome a lazy script. Unfortunately, One Hour Photo's script is the definition of ‘lazy’, complete with dream sequences, a mean and meddling boss, and a “Will he get out of the room before the camera pans back around?” moment of suspense.Too bad, because Williams deftly and hauntingly portrays Sy Parrish, an ostracized older man who develops photos at a department store and dreams that he is part of the happy families in the pictures. The customers, of course, have no idea that the friendly man behind the counter stares at their photos, yearning to be part of their lives. Sy sets his focus in particular on Nina Yorkin, a woman who has been dropping off film of special times with her family on his desk for many years.
Unfortunately, just when you start to suspend your disbelief and wonder whether to fear Sy or sympathize with him, the screenplay knocks you back into the real world with awkward dialogue (such as a fight in the Yorkins’ kitchen where they conveniently fill the audience in on past events) and a cliché mean boss character who, for some inexplicable reason, despises Sy’s attention to detail on the job and friendly rapport with the customers. At one point, Sy’s boss is somehow able to confront him at the store’s entrance within seconds of his arrival, and even more bizarrely, later in the film he gives Sy awful news then orders him to go immediately back to work, something which would never really occur in a corporate environment.
At other places, the writer resorts to tired and predictable techniques to frighten the viewer, such as dreams, daydreams and flashbacks. One particular peak into Sy’s mind that is genuinely unsettling, a huge mosaic of the Yorkin family’s private photos displayed on his living room wall, is shown too many times to maintain its shock value. In fact, a lot of imagery is overused and many plot points take too long to develop—things don’t really pick up until the second half. The phrase ‘one hour too long’ passed through my mind. Perhaps worst of all, it isn’t entirely clear how or why Sy, a friendly and relatively outgoing guy with a stable job, isn’t able to make friends or find romance. The movie waits far too long to answer these questions.One Hour Photo is almost saved by Williams’ performance, which is definitely noteworthy and arguably one of his best since Good Morning, Vietnam. The cinematography helps too, full of perfectly sterile and structured settings, but in the end the script’s shortcomings are too much of a hurdle to overcome. One Hour Photo wants to be an unsettling portrait of the outsider just looking to belong, but it falls short. Movies such as Lynch’s Elephant Man and even Carrie capture the same feeling more effectively.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=5742&reviewer=320
originally posted: 11/16/02 21:08:39
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USA
21-Aug-2002 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
30-Jan-2003
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