Robin Williams has been taking roles that are more and more interesting as the years go on, getting further away from his early ‘jumping out of his skin’ parts. Insomnia, Jakob the Liar, What Dreams May Come. Not that he’s given up on comedy entirely, he had Death to Smoochy earlier this year.
In One Hour Photo, Williams plays as far from type as he might possibly go. Seymour Parrish–Sy the Photo Guy–is a nearly complete non-entity, right down to his pale skin, cropped short blonde hair, and plain solid clothing. We’re talking about a man with no life, no friends, no family, nothing except the fantasies he has where he is Uncle Sy to 9 year old Jakob Yorkin and his parents. Parrish, who mans the photo counter in a chain drug store, has been developing this young couple’s photos since before Jakob was born and he’s kept copies of their photos to enshrine on his apartment wall.
Dylan Smith, Connie Nielson, and Michael Vartan (Alias) are fine as the family, Gary Cole is fine as Williams’ boss at Sav-Mart, and Eriq La Salle as the detective. But all of them are really secondary, barely material except to give context to the world inside Williams’ mind. Robin, Parrish, is the only actor with a chance to shine and, of course, he does.
The other star is writer/director Mark Romanek in, essentially, his first feature outing after working in music videos (R.E.M., Madonna, Nine Inch Nails). One can imagine that Romanek spent quite a long time getting a the little details down, figuring just the visuals to accompany his words. The recurring shots of Williams walking down aisles in the store, into or out of the picture, for example, are quite striking. The elaborate voiceovers by Williams that seem to be almost a second character and sum up to more dialogue than any other role except for Williams’ main dialogue.
To top the pleasure off, we saw it in Milpitas at the Cinema Saver for the Terrific Tuesday $1 admission after chomping on In’n’Out burgers.
Definitely recommended
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