Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Brilliance in Ambiguity
Don't expect One Hour Photo to be spoon fed. This movie will force you to generate some of your own conclusions about you've witnessed.Robin Williams gives one of his best performances to date as an appearingly mild mannered yet devious photo clerk who takes his job as a photo tech at the local "Sav-Mart' a bit too serious because it appears to be all he has. His emotional pathology becomes progressively evident and alarming as he becomes increasingly 'over-involved' with a family that brings in their photos to his store for processing. Although he blatantly oversteps some major boundaries, he does so in such a way that the seriousness of his disturbance is not realized soon enough. Some of his bizarre behaviors lead your thoughts to very dark places while at the same time, the pity his character generates, makes you want to believe that maybe his motivations really aren't that pathological. Because Williams character evokes such a wide range of emotion, your own feelings towards him vaccilate. He is devious yet likable even amidst his pervading creepiness. Although appearingly generally mild mannered and timid, he has his moments of assertiveness and later, 'over the edge' aggressiveness and righteous indignation. The cinematography and visual imagery is excellent and brilliantly contrasts the drab, washed out and somewhat color-less life of William's character to that of the vivid and vibrant family he becomes "focused" on. It's a good psychological thriller. Like a photo snapshot, there's much more to this film than what we see on the surface.
Rating: - A Dark and Disturbing work that is not for everyone
One Hour Photo is one of the most unique films of the year, and is a definite one of the most worthy for any type of awards out there (although i say the academy awards and Oscars dont mean squat anymore, this is one of the few films worthy of truelly winning that, like One flew over the Cuccos NEst and ROcky).The story behind this is that Robin Williams plays clerk at a one hour photo shop. He has been working there for 20+ years and over the pst 9 has helped this wonderful family that he truely loves. He is very friendly, but very introverted. Hoever this family fills hinm with joy, they are like the perfect family to him. However his boss does not like him, and tries to do whatever he can to get him fired. Finally when he discovers that up to 100 photos have gone missing over the years, as well as a disposible camera that Williams character gave the son over, WIlliams loses his job. In the course of this he hits a state of depression and he discovers shortly there after that the perfect family he admires, is not so perfect, as the husband has been cheating on the wife, and the Mistress has been photographing the whole ordeal. These turn of events leads to a very chilling very sad ending that wraps up this really unique movie. I also got the feeling that either the Writer or the Director was a Neon Genesis Envangellion Fan because of frequent looks on that and also how WIlliams Character went through a shocking and drastic change much like Shinji did in NEon Genesis Envangellion (If you have no idea what I am talking about, Neon Genesis is an Anime sereis that is around 25 episodes and is very strange but very powerful). I am giving this movie 5 stars because it is that damn good. However in all honesty it is one of those movies that you can only wath once, because after that it starts to lose it's effect. Maybe I will look back on it in a few years, but really this is a classic that should not be missed.
Rating: - Creepiness is in the Eye of the Beholder
I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. Even so,I subtracted a star from the otherwise perfect rating simply because something about the movie didn't work. Not that the plot, style, characterizations and overall visual presentation of the film was not well constructed and in-sync. It wasn't that... it was the audience. We are just too well-primed to accept the strange as, well, almost acceptable.
In portraying Sy Parrish,Robin Williams takes his deranged writer role in 'Insomnia' up a notch. At first, Sy seems the typically harmless guy with the best of intentions and one or two loose screws. He's lonely: no friends, no family. His job seems to be all important to him,and he performs well but, in actuality the job is just a means to an end. By perfectly processing the film rolls handed over to him at the local discount department store, Sy becomes a voyeur without ever leaving the confines of the world of his apartment and the store. In particular, he has zeroed in on the Yorkin family: Nina, Will and their young son. To him,they have a model existence,one where Sy envisions himself as an involved "uncle", albeit to the extreme especially when he discovers that Will is having an affair with another photo client. Sy's loose screws drop out of his head as his picture of perfection is trampled and he devises a method of 'helping' the situation in a way that leaves the moviegoer's imagination stinging with bizarre possibilities that I will not disclose.
All this makes for an enthralling panorama of suburbian life that mesmerizes but nevertheless misses a beat somewhere in the process. I think as 21st century film critics we have become just a little too anesthesized to strangeness as portrayed on the silver screen. We have seen it all, haven't we? Hannibal Lecter scared the daylights out of us with his slithering tongue and psychological slashing of Jodi Foster in 'The Silence of the Lambs', yet in 'Hannibal', a more gruesome act of eating Ray Liotta's still thinking brain had somewhat of a lesser impact. We have been 'privledged' to see multiple-personalities, child molestors, sexual deviants, serial killers and the all purpose cannibal---hey, we all love the Sopranos---so as creepy as Robin William's portrayal of Sy Parrish should be to our moral and ethical sensibilities, it is somehow diminished by our own sophistication as curried from the virtual world of films. Sy just doesn't provide the 'punch' needed to overthrow Hannibal from the current 'King Weirdo' throne. Visually, the director provides only a hint of what Sy's punishment for Will actually is---and this is the one moment of the film that lifts the hair off the back of the neck---ironically what WE DON"T SEE is more bizarre than what is shown in full technicolor.
Nonetheless,'One Hour Photo' is still a good film in spite of our jaded viewpoints. Connie Nielson ('Gladiator') is chic yet vulnerable as the suburban wife and mother and Michael Vartan ('Mists of Avalon')is sufficently sexy and thoroughly ashamed as the straying husband and father. While the sterile whiteness of the ubiquitously offensive suburban superstore and that of William's apartment in the film suggests Sy's toxic need for order in an otherwise unordered situation contrasts well with the picture perfect environs of the Yorkin family's phony Utopian dream. Check it out--you'll only add to your library of the Bizarre.
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