One Hour Photo

First of all, to discuss the newfound joy in watching movies on television. I would have never gotten up and watched One Hour Photo on my own, but there it was. The main motivation to watch this movie again was the fact that my girlfriend, who hates Robin Williams, had not seen it, and I wanted her to see him at his utmost creepiest. Bless her heart for putting up with my adamant pushing for watching particular movies, but I still have not dragged her into a Lord of the Rings viewing, but rest assured... IT WILL HAPPEN.

Anyway, another reason was, for the first time in a long time, I came upon the movie as it was starting, which is fantastic. It was still on FX, meaning everything is edited to hell, but fortunately this movie remains relatively clean, and ironically the one scene with any nudity at all is pretty much there entirely. What's NOT there is the word "fuck" and some pictures of someone's amateur porn that Sy, Robin Williams' character, develops. But anyway, the movie on the whole is there.

And that movie, overall, was kind of disappointing on this viewing.

So here's the deal, this is a Fox Searchlight picture, which usually means those slightly off kilter movies that aren't HEAVILY subversive or stylistically unnerving on the viewer, but they're also awkward enough to not earn a spot with the Fox label. Think Juno or Little Miss Sunshine for the humor section, this film for the suspense/horror.
That being the case, this movie gets a little more artsy than most, and it makes for interesting contrasts to the typical "follow the creep" and being that photos are the setting, most those contrasts are visual. Rather than live in the dark and be a generally murky man. Sy Parrish is a man who looks clean and pristine. His apartment is almost entirely white barring things like stove grills which I'm sure he'd make white if he could help it. To color things a little bit, he may wear a blue tie or blue messenger bag to match his bright blue eyes. It's neat because it shows man who's empty, neurotic as hell, and of course weird with a hint of well-wishing. But what primarily makes him creepy is his obsession with a specific family that frequents his One Hour Photo counter at their local SavMart. As it turns out, he makes duplicate copies of EVERY roll of film they bring in and keeps them for himself to place on a wall of his. Creepy and dorky all in one. As it turns out, this is the one colorful part of his apartment, and it doesn't even really belong to him. Everything about it screams creepy lonely longing motherfucker.

So what happens when he learns that this family he idolizes is far from perfect? When he learns that the story in the photos is basically a lie? Watch the film to find out!

Now, had Robin Williams not played this character, it's very possible this movie would go down in flames. First of all, he does creepy extraordinarily well, walking that line of decency/inappropriate work interactions uncomfortably well. He behaves like a normal miserable person at home and lets his surroundings do all the talking. It's subtle, it's pristinely disgusting, it's great. Everyone knows him to be funny (Mork & Mindy) or incredibly useless and stupid (RV). He's not often given these roles, and I think we're about due for another one. I enjoy it, and I bet if he weren't famous, he would be this creepy to people. Actually, most actors would.

But it's an understatement to say he could've ruined the movie if he didn't perform well. Even if he did a moderate job, this movie would, in my eyes, tank. First off, the plot holes are a series of small things that after a while grew grating. Things like the mother character telling her boy she's just dropping off some photos so don't take long in the store, and then saying that she'd like to pick up the photos that very same day in an hour. It's a minor oversight, I know, but it's there. Some others seem to have more to do with keeping the movie stylish rather than logical, but whatever. That's the small nitpick. The bigger one has to do with that style. The film uses its distinct visuals EVERYWHERE and it's a huge part of the film, and it goes over the top when it starts to just film shit and let the viewer make symbolism out of it. Once in a while it's witty, like a mirror looking like a photograph, but often it's just stupid. "Let's film a lone coin-op rocking horse outside the shop running with no one on it! Yeah, that's lonely!" It gets a little much.
I bet writer/director Mark Romanek hoped this to be significant. He hoped it would be his Taxi Driver or something, and I can see how he could have succeeded. The imagery shows a static lifeless world filled with shelves of crap in stores, and Sy's home reflects it to an extent. And being a byproduct of a materialistic world, he himself is almost like a robot seeking affection with only images of it to have any understanding, and then the ideal image is shattered leading to a breakdown. I get that, but for some reason I just wasn't all too shook up at the end of this film. There was just a guy I felt sorry for because he was lonely and honestly didn't do much about it. At least Travis Bickle tried to establish relationships. One Hour Photo is more about the look of the world and Sy himself, and not enough on the world itself or the characters around him who offered decent performances but whose fairly prominent presence away from Sy just made him even more of a creepy guy than an antihero.
But I have to bear in mind that Romanek is primarily a music video man, so of course it's heavy on the visual side. A lot of this shit looks like it'd come right out of a music video or TV commercial, the photos themselves are a horrible victim of this, actually.
Again, Robin Williams turns in a great enough performance, and you do get a moral quandary at the end, but it's just a few elements short of sheer greatness. However, it's also much more stylish than a lot of great movies. If there were a scale with one end stating Style, and the other stating Substance, it would lean toward style, but closer to substance than many similar films. I'd say that's worth something. It's still a fun creepy guy thriller at its heart.