Robin Williams has had a rather varied film career. Somewhere between "Mrs. Doubtfire," "What Dreams May Come" and "Death to Smoochy," the quality of his films has slipped. While many saw "Insomnia" as a return to form, with Williams facing off with a critics' favorite, Al Pacino, that appears to have been a bit premature. And while the perception was widespread of "One Hour Photo" as a branching out effort, it ended up coming off as more of a coup de grace for Williams' career.
The plot of the film is centered on a single character, Sy Parrish (Williams), a long-time employee at a Wal-Mart-esque express photo shop. But to say the film is centered around Sy is an understatement -- the film is a psychological profile of Williams' character, and hardly anything else.
"One Hour Photo" follows Sy's compulsive obsession with one of his patrons and her family, the Yorkins (Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan and Dylan Smith). He is obsessed with the family for the same reason the family nearly ruins the movie--they are painfully suburban. Everything about them and their life reeks normalcy, and this drives Sy crazy.
This is because Sy is not normal; the film makes this all too clear. But his abnormality isn't that exciting or even interesting, it's just weird. In fact, Sy is so odd that he's boring.
Two pivotal developments in the plot force the movie to move along. First, Sy discovers a picture of Will Yorkin, the (not so?) perfect husband figure, and one of his co-workers in the midst of an impassioned embrace. This is a shock to Sy, who was living under the delusion that the Yorkins were a perfect family . Sy reacts naturally -- by getting angry with Will Yorkin for not being regular.
Simultaneously, Sy's boss at work (Gary Cole) decides to fire him for discrepancies in the books at the photo shop. Apparently, Sy has been stealing extra exposures for years of the Yorkins and pasting them on a wall in his apartment in a huge this-is-obviously-not-my-life-like mosaic. So Sy's boss fires him, which makes Sy mad at his boss. Angry, Sy retaliates.
He does this by taking a roll of pictures of his boss's young daughter and dropping them off at his former workplace, obviously not expecting to pick them up but hoping his boss would see them. His ex-boss becomes very upset when shown the photographs and calls in a stereotypical police detective (Eriq LaSalle). The detective, along with a whole unit of officers, eventually trap Sy coming out of a hotel, but only after he has tortured Will Yorkin and his adulterous lover by forcing them to be photographed in various sex positions in their hotel room.
The final scene of the film takes place in an interrogation room, being questioned by the detective. While initially hesitant, Sy eventually breaks down and tells the whole story of his sexually abused childhood, a plausible explanation for his irrational behavior.
"One Hour Photo" may have, at some point, seemed to be a good idea. Written and directed by Mark Romanek, an established name in the music-video business, the film never really progresses past that idea.
For one, the whole business comes off as very pedestrian. The film is nothing more than a bad picture of an odd man. To make matters worse, every aspect of the film other than Williams' character is downright sleep inducing. All of the secondary characters in the film are flat and static in every sense of the words.
Shame upon shame, the film has no surprises. Every action and reaction in the film are anticipated. Even the attempts at metaphor are such failures in subtlety they were laughable. For example, Sy has a pet hamster that is repeatedly depicted running on his wheel. Even the whole metaphor of photographs as representing the life Sy didn't have is painfully spelled out.
Romanek's intention in all this is simple--he wants to allow Sy to make as stark a contrast as possible by creating the most perfect world he can. But the world he creates isn't perfect--it's just familiar and tiresome. And worse yet, it provides a vivid backdrop for Williams' mediocre acting performance. Robin Williams' biggest problem is that he can never stop being Robin Williams; his characters are never convincing.
Which brings me to my last point " the film is devoid of meaning. The final child abuse copout the film gives is almost as much an insult to the actual tragedy of such cases as it is a plausible explanation for Sy's character. Even the fear "One Hour Photo" tries to invoke (which would be a reasonable case to make the movie worth watching) isn't real fear; it's just a sort of discomfort in that you're being forced to watch such a bad, odd film.
"One Hour Photo" is a failure, and rescue Robin Williams' reputation it did not. What it did do is paint another painfully boring picture of American suburbia and give Mr. Williams yet another chance to just as painfully be himself.
