A Man Called Otto is a remake of the Swedish film A Man Called Ove based on the 2012 eponymous novel by Fredrik Backman. I haven’t seen the original, but this new version has left a lot to be desired for one main reason: It’s uneven.
Tom Hanks stars as Otto Anderson, a grumpy codger who lives in Pittsburgh. Otto is someone who doesn’t like to interact with others and is religiously going about maintaining order in the gated community. He has no friends and lives a solitary existence.
One day, a new family moves into his neighborhood, and Otto is determined to show them the same amount of unfriendliness he shows the others.
Eventually, the family slowly but gradually wins him over, and Otto begins to learn how to embrace people in his life. He does such things as trying to teach the wife how to drive and befriending their two daughters while dealing with an annoying clown that won’t give him his quarter back during a magic show.
Beneath Otto’s irascible exterior is a man who is dealing with grief and loss over his wife. Otto decides he wants to commit suicide to free himself of his burden, but each attempt is thwarted by either an incompetent plan or by landing Otto in a predicament that allows him to turn into a reluctant hero.
Having Hanks play against type is certainly a welcoming change, and he’s unsurprisingly good in the role, but the script is filled with too much schmaltz and not enough humor in order to make it strike a balance.
What does the movie want to be? It doesn’t have a dramatic arc that is convincing to get us from the beginning to the end, and when it stops for humor, it’s sorely lacking.
A Man Called Otto is a blandly made film that doesn’t really justify its existence due to the fact that the movie is uncertain about what it wants.
As far as I can tell, it’s a film that tells us that life should be shared with others, but it does so in a way that forces an inconsistent tone. By the end, the movie ultimately suffers, and so do we.
Grade: C+
(Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving suicide attempts and language.)
