A Man Called Otto (2022) – 3/5

Forrest Grump, the man with a too big heart

„A Man Called Otto“ is a co-production between the United States of America and Sweden from 2022 and this film is mostly in the English language. Here and there, you may find a little bit of Spanish. The Swedish component comes from the fact that the book this is based on is from Sweden and that there was also a Swedish movie based on said book and the fact that not only the writer of the book, but also the writer of the screenplay from the Swedish movie are credited here shows how much of an inspiration this Swedish book was as well. But let’s look at the basics for now: The director is my fellow German Marc Forster, who is surely among the most successful German filmmakers in Hollywood now, maybe most successful Germans even. Good for him that he got to work with Tom Hanks here. Of course, if you see everything he has worked on before like Johnny Depp movies and 007 films, it is no huge surprise. The Depp movie was „Finding Neverland“ and that one he collaborated with David Magee and the latter scored an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. I am saying this because Forster and Magee are also united for this new film here. I already mentioned the lead actor Tom Hanks. He is by far the most known cast member you will find here, maybe even the only really known.

Mariana Treviño is somewhere between lead and supporting here and she may be new to most viewers, including myself, but she has actually enjoyed a pretty long and successful career apparently on Spanish-language projects. No surprise she holds her own pretty well during her many scenes with Hanks and she is quite charming while doing so. I disagreed though with the idea of him having to get rid of his wife’s clothes to make a fresh start. Also of course, she is not 30 like her character, but in her mid-40s. She does look younger though, so she gets away with this age gap. I thought she was quite stunning too. Same is definitely true for Rachel Keller here and to an even bigger extent. She’s really gorgeous, a touch of Olivia Wilde and Allison Williams to her character. She does not share the screen with Hanks though because her character is set several decades in the past or actually she does share the screen a lot with Hanks, just not with Tom, but with Truman Hanks, who plays the young Otto in here. You see it was quite a family affair. This does not only include father and son, but also Rita Wilson who is Tom Hanks‘ wife of course and she is (like Hanks himself) a producer here. She also contributed in the music department it seems. So did Thomas Newman, who was the man in charge of the score here. He does not have the same Oscar record like Randy Newman, but boy Thomas Newman has all these nominations, but did not manage to win just once. When will it happen? Will it ever happen? It did not happen for this movie here. The Swedish original scored two Oscar nominations in fact, this one here only managed some less significant awards at small events. I am even a bit surprised that Hanks was not nominated at the Golden Globes. Maybe his character was seen as too serious to be let in as a comedy/musical actor. But it’s not too important anyway.

I would say this was a good movie overall and that is all that counts. I see general audiences liked it more than critics and I am not too surprised. Honestly, the film could have needed more subtlety here and there. Take the scene when he has his heart problems near the end and then ends up at a hospital and right there in the room the female co-lead gets her contractions and gives birth immediately afterwards. This was just too much. Same is true for the scene in which the bad guys (if you wanna call them that) get exposed for their dubious activities like reading into medical histories that they are not allowed to read into. Hanks‘ character called that social media influencer or reporter or whatever you wanna call her and she happily record all this escalation of course. A great deal of the film is also predictable, like how Hanks‘ character really warms up to his new neighbors and is then in his own grumpy way even friends with everybody there. It wasn’t bad, but still nothing too inspired and just not surprising. This is not as good as „Gran Torino“ for example. Maybe I even found the scenes from the past better, but perhaps there it was Keller’s beauty blinding me in a way. In any case, this film made me want to travel to the Niagara Falls right away and I found the scene at the restaurant really sweet somehow when he confesses to her that he ate at home because he does not have so much money and this way she could eat whatever she wants. Or what followed afterwards was sweet, but maybe even too much already with the other people at the restaurant applauding them. Just one more example where the film could have needed more subtlety.

Maybe the same could even be said about the bus accident then on the way back from the Niagara Falls. We saw the date on the tombstone, so we knew that the woman survived the accident, but still losing her child and her ability to walk is disastrous enough I suppose. This was also only revealed towards the end, so we understand a bit where the grumpiness comes from, even if those events were like 30 years in the past, maybe more and he always stayed local to her, but of course her dying from cancer half a year ago or what it was adds even more despair for him. If it justifies these suicide attempts, it is difficult to say. This was where the film was a bit of a dark comedy already, but in a way it still felt as if they did not want to make it totally serious and in a way it looked and felt lighter there even than it actually was. I mean he was even hanging there already before physics saved him you could say. The more innocent comedy was for example when he gets in the car to make sure the vehicle ends up appropriately in the right parking spot and then he sees these two young cute girls in the backseat. This was more entertaining than the scene with the clown for example. Far from every joke was a winner here. Much more was predictable. The cat ending up at his place eventually and that he does not hate it anymore was is just another example. Maybe it was a bit surprising that another neighbor took it with him first. Did he really forget about his cat allergy? I mean it was pretty bad given the rash. That character was funny though, he was such a kind-spirited and harmless man, really likable. If we go back to Otto, he reminded me a bit of the main character from Pixar’s „Up“. In a way you could also say that the antagonists coming to his house before he flies away do have a connection with the antagonists here, even if of course the idea of the main antagonist the guy from „Up“ meets later on has nothing to do with this film here. But the parallel with the deceased wives is extremely obvious.

There was only one aspect to this new Otto movie here that I really disliked and this was where the film (or the writer) tried to obviously to appeal to liberal mainstream Hollywood. I am sure you know already what I am talking about: the story with the transgender kid. It was awful. Their first encounter was unpleasant and it did not feel realistic or that it made sense that Otto made a connection with him (I just use „him“ now to keep things easier) too and even let him crash at his place then when of course the kid’s dead threw him out one night. All pseudo escalation for the sake of it. The film really did not need this story. It runs for over two hours and would have been perfectly fine at 110 minutes too without this subplot. The explanation that Otto’s deceased wife was a teacher that always encouraged the kid and supported him was definitely not good enough of an explanation either. I cannot say what it was like in the Swedish film (or book), but I am 100% positive that it was not the way they did it in such a shoddy manner here in the American movie. So this is a key criticism that made it clear I cannot give this film more than three stars out of five. There were other minor flaws. The way how the woman towards the end stands up to Otto when she is not happy about his behavior I am still undecided if I liked it. I am not undecided about the aforementioned social media girl. She did not do a lot for me, except that she was attractive like almost every female in this movie, and when we see her at the funeral and talk about how they followed Otto over the course of several years was a bit ridiculous too. Some tendencies here were difficult to believe that Otto warmed up so quickly to so much of the stuff he despised at the beginning of the film. Would have needed better writing. Overall, I think this remake or whatever you wanna call it was not totally necessary, but the outcome is not disappointing and maybe it will get some American viewers maybe curious about the Swedish original, so it is not a bad thing either it got made. The outcome is pretty much by the books: not bad, but too simple at times and not particularly daring. It is everything here pretty much the way I expected, no real surprises. Well, the death at the end is a bit surprising, but they probably also only picked this ending because the base material forced them to. Give it watch, but no need to rush it. Thumbs-up.