Seymour 'SY' Parrish has been doing photo development for 20 years. He has a vast knowledge of modern photography and develops photos at a local department store for a living. But SY lives a sad and lonely life and begins spying on the Yorkin family, his biggest customers who seem to have everything in the world. SY begins to feel that he wants to be in the Yorkin's life, but when he discovers that the Yorkins are not as perfect as they seem, he becomes a man on a mission to expose the imperfections of the Yorkin family that could tear them apart.
Well, that's true, I guess.
So far as it goes.
More accurately, Sy is a freakin' nutball.
The Yorkin family, whose characters you don't see enough of to get truly invested in, gets all their family photos developed by Sy. Oddly, they never seem to notice how disturbingly much he knows about them. However, there is one good scene once Sy's plan to tear the family apart begins to come to fruition, and it's really the only scene that makes you empathize with the Yorkins. Having developed some photos that incriminate Will Yorkin, Sy slips them into an envelope of photos of their children that Nina Yorkin has developed. Nina opens them while driving, and nearly goes off the road at what she sees there - while Sy follows her in his little car.
Like The Final Cut, this movie is entirely carried by Robin Williams. His character is the only one in whom you have a serious investment, and although he's very very creepy and severely disturbing, you can sympathize with his enormous loneliness and isolation.
This movie is also a definite buy - high on the list, as a matter of fact - and should be watched by anyone who gets their film developed in the same place more than once.
