Tom Hanks is suicidal. So begins misjudged comedy drama A Man Called Otto. The film isn’t a metafiction. Hanks doesn’t play himself. Instead, he is the anti-hero of the title, a scowling grouch we meet preparing to take his own life. And yet the premise is a knowing wink, a grand casting against type where a persona built on stoic castaways and steadfast astronauts is pointedly turned sideways. Hanks, a co-producer, is clearly tickled by the thought.
Otto was once Ove, twice over. First came novelist Fredrik Backman’s 2012 bestseller A Man Called Ove, then the 2015 film of the same name. Back then, he was also Swedish. Now among the literal translations in this US remake (directed by Marc Forster) is the weather: grey Scandi gloom hangs over Pittsburgh. Otto is no less chilly. Miserably retired, he rails against his “idiot” neighbours. But they are only small, annoying cogs in a wider world of morons he is determined to exit.
His failed attempts to do so play as nervous black comedy. Flashbacks to the younger Otto, emotionally rescued by his late wife, are sudsy. (For these, the role is played by Hanks’s son Truman.) In the original, the glue for this tonal mish-mash was the liquorice dolour of leading man Rolf Lassgård. Hanks only adds more confusion, the baggage of his stardom putting every ratty outburst in quote marks before Otto pulls back from the brink.
Backman also gave Ove a slyly social-democratic flavour. Misanthropes need not be bigots. If the contemporary US is a more flammable context than Sweden circa 2012, the new movie leans into the same logic. Supporting characters include a sweetly hapless Mexican family and a bullied trans teenager, each inclusively allowed to prove that Otto has a heart of gold. (An impish stray cat has a similar function.)
Having an old white dude take this side in the culture war feels bold for Hollywood in 2023. A sitcom spin-off might see Otto settle into a retirement home, only to end up playing bingo with Clint Eastwood. But you’re nagged at too by the sense that the whole thing might be a satire of movie-business liberalism: an earnest, clumsy civics lesson delivered by a star all too clearly only kidding when he briefly plays the bad guy.
★★☆☆☆
In US cinemas now and in UK cinemas from January 6
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