One Hour Photo
By The Eva Monkey on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
I was reminded of One Hour Photo, and decided to dig it up and watch it again. I’ve posted about it before, but for those who are unfamiliar with the movie, let me break it down for you. Robin Williams plays a lonely, emotionally disturbed photo lab technician at SavMart, a colder fictionalized version of Wal-Mart. He becomes obsessed with a picture perfect (no pun intended) family, who he obsesses over and passively stalks. For those into psychological thrillers, it’s good stuff, but what is of interest to Eva fans is that a Mass Production Eva makes several appearances through the film. Robin Williams is supposedly a fan of Eva, and the appearance of the toy is supposedly his own personal addition to the film. This has been substantiated to a degree by comments by Matt Greenfield at Tekkoshocon, where he stated that Williams is a huge fan of Eva, and that Williams was/is part of their pitch package for Live Action Evangelion.
The toy makes three appearances in the film. The first is where the son Jake is in the store with his father, William Yorkin. Jake incorrectly describes the Mass Produced Eva as being a good guy, bearing a silver sword, being 60 feet tall, and pronouncing the name as E-van-jell-ee-on.
Williams’ character Sy later follows Jake to soccer practice, where he tries to give it to him as a gift. Jake refuses the gift, saying he can’t accept it from him.
Finally, Sy has an abstract nightmare and awakes and looks at the toy sitting on his nightstand.
For what it is, the movie falls on a spectrum of interesting to good. Eva fans may enjoy the movie and get a good chuckle out of the Eva-ness in it. I would recommend giving it a whirl whether you’re interested in seeing the part Eva plays in the film or not.