‘A Man Called Otto’ review: Who would have thought that a Tom Hanks movie could piss me off? – Indigo Buzz

Less well-being, more feeling nothing.

“Is Tom Hanks the problem? I wondered as I watched, mystified by A Man Called Otto. But as this dramedy about a grumpy old man with a heart of gold unfolded before me, it became clear that Hanks wasn’t the problem. It’s a symptom of saccharin disease that makes this adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s darkly comical Swedish novel A Man Called Ove feel fluffy.

Finding Neverland director Marc Forster and screenwriter David Magee have reunited for A Man Called Otto, which stars Hanks as a bitter widower who – once forced into retirement – ​​is determined to die by suicide. If only all the idiots in her neighborhood would stop interrupting her! It might seem like a shockingly dark premise for one of America’s most beloved men, but Hanks’ casting itself is a harbinger of how unbearably soft Ove’s sharp edges are. Forster and Magee hacked into Blackman’s novel, chiseling much of Otto/Ove’s tragic backstory, and with it much of the book’s all-knowing narrator’s eerily funny observations.

How is A Man Called Otto different from A Man Called Ove?

Gone are the hard knocks of childhood, the crushing death of the father he idolized and the fiery loss of their home. And with them, much of the explanation for why our protagonist is such a sour curmudgeon, the kind of guy who’s constantly on the lookout for thieves or scammers is gone. He is a man marked (literally and psychologically) by trauma, which has given him a tough exterior, not easy to approach. So in the book, when the cracks in that coldness start to show with a kind act here or a warm word there, it feels like the sun is shining through on a winter’s day. It is as if hope and salvation were made tangible. Cutting not only much of Ove’s tragedies from the story, but those of his neighbors as well, means the American film adaptation refuses to get properly dark. And without that depth, Otto’s character arc is extremely shallow.

In flashbacks, Forster introduces us to Otto’s early love with his wife Sonya, who loved books and was the light of his life. But without establishing the darkness that preceded their love, Sonya becomes a hasty pastiche of pleasant femininity, all smiles and warmth and sweet flirtations. Likewise, the truncation of a backstory between Otto and his elderly neighbors kills the setups benefit on vehicular rivalries and even the film’s heartwarming climax. Without establishing where these people have been, how can we appreciate how far they have come?!

Hanks played a bastard here (A League of Their Own) or there (Elvis), but his reputation as America’s daddy telegraphs the end of the film before it even begins. Otto might growl at retail employees, bark at a UPS driver, and scold a twittering pet owner for his dog’s unruly urine. But because we know it’s Tom Hanks, we hope he never does anything truly awful. And he won’t, which is our loss. The adapted screenplay pampers us, adding righteous motivations to some of Ove’s most shocking behaviors from the book. Ove’s pettiness was part of what made the book so wickedly funny, because sometimes you really want to punch a clown in the face, even if it’s not nice. Or at the very least, you want Ove to do it for you! That biting sense of humor is lost, leaving A Man Called Otto enjoyable but not funny.

The humor and heart of A Man Called Otto have been lost in translation.

Moments that meant a lot in the novel – like local children giving the hero an affectionate nickname – are undermined in the film by happening almost immediately. Nothing seems won when Hanks threatens to smile at the start of Act Two. Worse still, the emotionally closed Ove gets a lazy screenplay makeover. To preserve some of Backman’s terrific prose from the narrative, Otto is no longer the silent and stern type, but rather a talkative one eager to overshare every opportunity. Nothing develops in A Man Called Otto. It’s essentially a call and response, as if the healing power of community happens overnight or the saving weight of the soul can be shed as easily as a cloak of winter. Frankly, A Man Called Otto is insulting.

Forster doesn’t believe his audience can appreciate the story of a real bastard who finds a reason to live. Perhaps he has no faith that the American public could endure all the heartbreak of Ove’s youth to earn the shine of his senior revival. Either way, Magee’s script reduces Ove’s outlines to make him less bastard and more grumpy. The stakes are reduced. Side stories are shaved off to save time or to keep things light, but either way it kills the dimension of the original story. Even Otto’s favorite sparring partner — a pregnant, nosy immigrant (a kinetic Mariana Treviño) who relentlessly bangs on the walls he’s erected (along with her front door) — gets a gleeful makeover, subduing his abruptness with sugary smiles galore.

Imagine if the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas, but just grunted around the holiday market. What if Scrooge didn’t get poetic about his hatred of the poor? Would their turnovers have been so hard? Are their stories even worth telling? Maybe in Forster.

Sadly, this feel-good movie falls flat because it never lets us feel so bad. Gestures of grief and regret are not enough to cause emotions to hit us deep within. Shutting up the story of a suicidal man in Tireless Sidekicks feels more shocking than complex, seeing his problems as something with a quick fix. And Hanks in the lead role, while committed, can’t escape his generations-old persona to be a believable son of a bitch. Without such salinity, which made A Man Called Ove exhilarating, A Man Called Otto feels maddeningly inertial and downright silly.

A Man Called Otto opens in select theaters December 30 and runs January 13.