Rating: 
Summary: The poignancy of one-hour photos!
Review: Robin Williams appears in a powerful role as a nerdish one-hour photo technician who stalks a seemingly idyllic family, but then goes off of the deep end when he loses his job - and when he discovers that the husband is being unfaithful.Robin's [confused] character, Sy, wears beltless pants, velcroed shoes, has a spotless apartment, and drives about in a hybrid electric car. Need I say more? The mom, Connie Nielsen, looks great from any angle, even with her asymmetrical haircut. She is warm and loving, almost to the extreme. The son, Dylan Smith, is very sensitive and takes a liking to Sy. And the husband, Michael Vartan, (who looks like Hugh Grant, how fitting) is this feature's schmuck-of-the-month. The movie drives to a climactic finish - but then ends poignantly. One-hour photos are used as a touching metaphor to capture the simple beauties in life. The visual imagery in this movie is outstanding. This is a Robin Williams performance you surely won't want to miss!
Rating: 
Summary: creepy but....
Review: This movie is probably going to manage to 'tick' enough people off: It is very eerie, and I loved the dark atmosphere. wow what a concept! BUT! you keep waiting and waiting (like a suspense movie, maybe like silence of the lambs) for something dramatic or really sick to happen, because the character robin is playing is so unstable and mentally not there, you wait, and wait....and wait...and....NOTHING!! NOTHING EVER HAPPENS, a movie that manages to grab you from beginning to end, just to deliver NOTHING! without giving away too much, what would have made or breaked this movie would have been that final scene. If it had been blood beyond belief, then I would have rated it way better.....but nothing HAPPENS!!! anyway you get the point. Rent it first, bring a pillow.
Rating:
Summary: Loved it.
Review: Summary:
Seymour Parrish (Robin Williams) has been working in the film developing department at Sav Mart for quite awhile now. Seymour (Sy) doesn't have much to look forward to outside of work, but there is one thing he cherishes - the Yorkin family: Nina (Connie Nielsen (I)), Will (Michael Vartan), and Jake (Dylan Smith (III)). Sy 'the photo guy' has been developing their film since before Jake was born and has begun to feel like an uncle to Jake and a member of the family - he knows just about everything about them. When his manager at work begins giving him a hard time, Sy immerses himself more deeply into his fantasies as a member of the Yorkin family, until he finds out that this seemingly perfect family isn't so perfect. Taking matters into his own hands, Sy, likely using personal childhood recollections to guide him, resorts to unorthodox means to break the news to Nina about why Will is such a neglectful father. My Comments:
This was a really well thought out and marvelously designed movie. Robin Williams does a great job. Almost the entire movie follows Robin Williams's character who says surprisingly little - but you are still entranced by what is going on. The rest of the acting is pretty good as well. The special features of the DVD talk about how the SavMart has been designed to represent something of a fantasy world for Sy; I think that is something you kind of put together subconsciously, but when it is made clear what they have done it adds depth to the movie and Sy's character. Though it seems straightforward, there is so much going on the film that you can't really afford to miss any of it - you have to pay very close attention. The extra features on the DVD contain lots of commentary and some fun interviews - Robin Williams is hilarious in the Charlie Rose interview. Overall, I thought this was a great movie. Excellent story, superb cinematography, and remarkable acting. The social commentary was appropriately subtle but present in everything. There is a bit of nudity, so if you don't care for that you may want to skip this one. Otherwise, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: No Suspense
Review: This film was a real disappointment because there was no real suspense. It was abundantly clear that "Sy" was Psycho from the beginning, but there was never the ratcheting up of threat that makes the viewer nervous. The film is full of Hollywood inconsistencies -- the family never really catches on to this guy's wierdness, the muscled husband is intimidated by weakling Williams with a knife, the affair is open knowledge at the husband's company. . . . come on. SPOILIER --- the worst part is that the film-makers didn't even have the guts to give the psycho teeth -- he doesn't hurt anybody, and in the end we are left with a psychobable explaination for what messed him up. Boo hoo. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: I watched this after reading several reviews, and man was I let down. The film follows every cliche imaginable-- cookie cutter suspense... Robin Williams is nothing more than the stereotypical creepy guy destined to be a psycho. How much more interesting the film would have been if the stalker would have been someone much more "normal" who is going nuts under the surface... so much more could have been done on that level symbolically, with photos never revealing the true nature of things. Anyway... it was ultimately lousy & predictable. If you want to see Robin Williams in a good creepy role, get Insomnia instead-- a much stronger & well made film all around.
Rating: 
Summary: 1.5 Hours Wasted
Review: Paint drying, grass growing, watching for water to boil. All are
much faster paced and more entertaining than watching Robin
Williams not really lose it as a pretty tame psycho. The guy
just wants to be loved, too bad he wants love from a we-don't-care-about-anyone yuppie family straight from the Hollywood
cookie cutter. How this junk rates talent like Williams or
even a theatrical release is a question for the ages.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, a must see!!
Review: This film is definitely a truely great suspense thriller! Parts of it border on disturbing, well actually they are disturbing. I don't recommend it for the kiddies, but it is a great performance by Robin Williams a definite change from his usual roles.
Rating:
Summary: Boring With No Plot
Review: The main character had no real driving objective or opponent, creating boredom for the viewer. I found myself wanting to fastforward most of the time.
The writer captures conversations between normal people and awkward people very well, but the movie lacked a main character goal to keep us involved. It spends an hour developing the characters background, which is supposed to be done within a half hour.
In an effort to create suspense, we see the main character break into the house of his picture perfect family, walk around, deficate in their bathroom, and enjoy a beer while watching their TV. It appears he is going to be caught, but, oh wait, it was only a dream.
He also has a bad dream resulting a in ridiculous spewing of blood that I haven't seen since Monty Python. And what married man takes pictures of himself kissing another woman, let alone one who is rich and could be blackmailed? And, who gets fired for being irate and is then given the rest of the week to continue working without turning in his keys?
Robin Williams does a fine job, but the movie is too unrealistic and boring. Perhaps it started out better but was changed during filming, as I don't see how the script would be approved in its final form.
Rating:
Summary: Underdeveloped film.
Review: The third part of Robin Williams' "Trilogy of Evil" turns out to be as mediocre as the other two. *One Hour Photo* is about Sy Parrish, aka "Sy the Photo Guy", who is a photo developer at the fictional "SavMart" superstore. Though the store is clearly based on Wal-Mart, director Mark Romanek feels obliged to paint the store sets a sterile, blinding white, highlighted by a soft, clinical blue (with employee uniforms to match). Apart from making the store look like a sanitarium, the effect as a whole looks like second-rate Kubrick: it's like Wal-Mart in space. It's not very realistic-looking. Neither is Sy Parrish: Williams, sporting close-cropped, peroxide-rinsed hair and a constant close-lipped smile for the customers, may as well have the words "HELLO I'M A CREEP" stitched across his laboratory apron. The movie loosely details this character's obsession with one family for whom he has regularly developed photographs over the years. He makes his own copies of their snapshots, takes them home, and meticulously pastes them on a huge bulletin-board-type thing in his antiseptic apartment. But, before we even see the bulletin-board of photos, we're shown a scene wherein Williams watches an episode of *The Simpsons* without cracking a smile . . . so you KNOW he's disturbed, even if his appearance wasn't enough to convince you of the fact. Well anyway, turns out that the husband of the Dream Suburban Family is an adulterer: his mistress hands over some intimate negatives of the two of them that inevitably wind up in Williams' hands. The result? Self-righteous insanity from Williams. Blah blah blah. Along the way, the manager at SavMart (played by a great character actor who usually portrays sleazy adulterer on "Lifetime Channel" movies -- wish I knew his name) discovers that Williams has been making extra copies of customers' photographs, and fires the creep. (I was immensely relieved, btw, to learn that film-developing machines are calibrated to keep count of their output!) The scenes between Williams and the manager are the best in the movie: they provide some much-needed Real World immediacy, and are a bracing respite from the Kubrickian cinematography and Williams' "disturbed" mind. But the movie must march onward to its crisis, which involves Williams "acting out" in a most embarrassing manner, followed by the denouement, which involves Williams providing a pop-psychoanalytic "explanation" for his mental disturbance. The mawkishness of the latter is actually rather in line with most of the actor's work, making *One Hour Photo* seem not as much of a "departure" as might be originally supposed.
Rating:
Summary: Fades into Oblivion
Review: It was as if the writer was halfway through the script, then said, "Well I dont know what to do, lets end it real quick, have the bad guy snap, do some stuff, then roll the credits." The first hour spends so much time trying to develop a thick, emotional plot; and it works really well. Then it just . . .ends.
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