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Tom Hanks has worked his high-wattage, regular-guy-hero amiability for so long that he was bound to experiment with a year like 2022 eventually. In the summer, he gave us an oily, flesh-packed Colonel Tom Parker with that strange barbed-wire accent in \u201cElvis,\u201d then he took on Geppetto in the year\u2019s other, forgettable \u201cPinocchio,\u201d and now he\u2019s been fitted for grumpypants, frown lines, and a self-made noose as a suicidal sourpuss in \u201cA Man Called Otto.\u201d<\/p>\n
But we know Hanks by now, and what kind of curmudgeon he\u2019d want to play, which means you don\u2019t have to be familiar with the source material of \u201cOtto\u201d to guess within the first few minutes \u2014 when he\u2019s being obnoxious to a perfectly kind hardware store cashier, but in that isn\u2019t-it-cute-how-mean-he-is way \u2014 that this is one of those movies typically described in terms of \u201csurrendering\u201d to \u201ccharms,\u201d and \u201cwinning you over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story of an ordinary Scrooge\u2019s new lease on happiness, \u201cOtto\u201d is an American adaptation of the widely read Swedish novel \u201cA Man Called Ove\u201d by Fredrik Backman, from the \u201cFinding Neverland\u201d team of director Marc Forster and writer David Magee. \u201cOve\u201d has been filmed once already, a 2015 adaptation which Sweden submitted for that year\u2019s International Film Oscar, earning a nomination. The other surefire observation from the New Jersey-set, Hanks-led \u201cOtto\u201d is that this year\u2019s golden statuettes are very much on this unremarkable film\u2019s none-too-complicated mind.<\/p>\n
Living in a house on a closed-off oval of a street, Otto is not just his neighborhood association\u2019s resident crank, he\u2019s its unofficial (and unwanted) watchdog for everything from vehicle rules to animal control to basically whatever irritates him. (A muttered \u201cIdiot\u201d is his favorite tag to any encounter.) Newly jobless as a forced retiree from the auto plant, believably friendless, and a widower of many years, Otto approaches his various attempts at suicide with procedural efficiency, only to be interrupted unwittingly by the newest move-ins, a kind, spirited young family of four led by sharp-tongued, pregnant Marisol (Mariana Trevi\u00f1o).<\/p>\n
Impervious to Otto\u2019s rudeness, Marisol enlists her cranky new neighbor\u2019s help in small, then incrementally more involved ways that \u2013 surprise \u2013 act as the defrosting agent for his eventual thaw. The origins of his grouchiness, meanwhile, are doled out in flashbacks: how as an idealistic young man (Truman Hanks) he fell for the sparkling Sonya (Rachel Keller), yet over the years let life\u2019s setbacks harden and isolate him.<\/p>\n
Of course, there\u2019s nothing inherently unappealing about a familiar, sentimental story like this, with its worthwhile takeaways about senior vulnerability, tolerance, and the healing power of community. But there was a time when Hollywood professionals wanting to inject this stuff into our veins deployed wit, craft, and a supremely-honed gloss \u2013 the trimmings that made us forget we were being manipulated into a state of awwww. So why does this \u201cOtto\u201d have to feel so tossed-off, be so unfunny, and look so crummy and choppy? Are we that far removed from the onetime ideal of elegantly packaged holiday fare that was supposed to not look like cheap TV?<\/p>\n
Hanks is expectedly fine, but the role is closer to the sitcom world he left behind instead of the more pointed, Eastwood-in-\u201cGran Torino\u201d-style mix of humor, pain, and redemption it could have been (while still being PG-level heartwarming). He\u2019s more of a geezer puppet than a character: entertaining at times, but hardly memorable. Trevi\u00f1o is likable enough, capturing something flinty and witty about a certain type of no-nonsense mom, and yet there\u2019s no getting around the schematics of her creation.<\/p>\n
Outside of those two, it\u2019s a woefully zipless character roster, with the casting of Hanks\u2019 youngest son as his younger self something of a gimmicky misfire, and Mike Birbiglia wasted as a real estate villain. Then again, Forster\u2019s haphazard direction is so checked-out it\u2019s painful \u2013 he shows no interest in giving anyone a scene that isn\u2019t wholly about snapping something into place, and his comedy mise-en-sc\u00e8ne and timing in even the simplest moments of humor is flat. And the less said about Thomas Newman\u2019s phoned-in score, the better.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Man Called Otto\u201d may be about restoring the Ottos of the world to a new sense of purpose. So why does it feel like for anyone who cares about movies, this is just going to create more of the ill-tempered, fist-shaking, get-off-my-lawn kind?<\/p>\n
\u201cA Man Called Otto\u201d opens in LA and NYC Dec. 30, limited Jan. 6 and wide Jan. 13 via Sony Pictures.<\/p>\n
View this article at The Wrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018A Man Called Otto\u2019 Review: A Cranky Hanks Heads a Blah Humbug of a Movie: Tom Hanks has worked his high-wattage, regular-guy-hero amiability for so long that he was bound to experiment with a year like 2022 eventually. In the summer, he gave us an oily, flesh-packed Colonel Tom Parker with that strange barbed-wire accent
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