I really thought that this post was going to be about Tom Hanks’s recent carrier choices, but after seeing this, I changed my mind. Was the Pinocchio movie a bad choice? Yes! Was his performance in Elvis weird and not great? Yes! But he did put together a performance in A Man Called Otto, that was good enough to rebuild my faith in him. If this movie was put into the wrong hands, it very easily could have fallen flat, but Hanks was able to blend the misanthropic attitude with the slowly softening about face perfectly.
Otto is a deeply angry man. He is angry at the world, and he no longer wants to be a part of it. The movie opens with Otto buying some rope, and even while buying the rope, he cannot help but argue with the cashier over a few cents. Then it becomes clear, that he is going to use the rope to hang himself, but before he can do the deed, new people are moving in across the street, and Otto cannot restrain himself from going over and yelling at someone for being an idiot. This new family across the street is very warm to him, and after a failed attempt to hang himself, because the ceiling breaks, he continues to have interactions with the new family across the street, and although he is initially very cold, the cracks in his hard façade start to show. This does not prevent him from trying to kill himself multiple times, but each time, someone comes and interrupts him.
All while the story is being told, each time he tries to commit suicide, a flashback is shown. It gives the audience details on how Otto had become so hardened. The main reason is due to his wife. He fell in love, and they started out doing great, but a bus crash resulted in the paralysis of his wife, and not only that, but his wife was pregnant, and the baby did not make it. Then to make things worse, they eventually found out that his wife had cancer, and she passed away. On top of that, there was neighborhood bureaucracy going on as well, between Otto and his friend, and the development company, making buildings not accessible for his paralyzed wife, so Otto clearly earned his jaded view on life, but at the end of the day, he was like the Grinch, and his heart grew two sizes too big.
A large amount of the advertising for this movie seems to focus on Otto being a curmudgeon. It is all about him being a jerk to others. He is basically what is now known as a Karen. He is willing to fight back on anything and everything he disagrees with. His go to line is that people are idiots, but there is so much more to this movie. It ends up being incredibly emotional. There is no real indication from the trailers that this movie is going to get dark. I was incredibly surprised, when Otto tried to attempt suicide the first time, and even more surprised when it became a reoccurring bit in the movie.
I went into this movie thinking that it was out and out going to be a straight up comedy, but for the last thirty to forty minutes, I was almost constantly choked up. There was no way I expected to full on cry and be holding in a sob at the end of the movie as tears streamed down my face. There was a world where I saw this being a heart-warming movie for sure, but crying, that I did not expect to happen. They did an excellent job of showing different family dynamics, and although at the start, it seemed like Otto would have little to no understanding of what a family dynamic was, the first time he was watching the kids, he bought in quickly, and he handled them very well.
One interesting note about this movie is that it was originally a book, but then it was made into a Swedish movie first. I have never seen the Swedish version of the movie, but from the reviews on Letterboxd, it is a well-regarded movie, and many people do not see the need for there to be an American remake, because the original Swedish version of the movie was good. There is a similar story behind Another Round. Another Round won the best international film at the Oscars two years ago, and then the script sold again to an American company, and the rumor is that it was going to be made again, and they were going to have Leonardo DiCaprio be the star instead of Mads Mikkelsen, but I feel like if a movie is good enough to win best international feature, does it really need to be made as an American version? The same would go for this film, except I had not heard the hype around the Swedish version, so at least the American version will bring more attention to the original and the book.
I went to the first showing that my theater had of the movie, which was a two o’clock on a Thursday, which really limits the potential audience, but when I looked around when the lights came on at the end of the movie, there was a good amount of people in the small theater, and most of them were older. After watching, I feel like this is the perfect old person movie. The main character is playing an old curmudgeon, and he is stuck in his ways. He tries to stay away from the modern world, and he is constantly criticizing those that are younger than him, but the important part is that he changes. He realizes that social media can be used for good, and that it can help people, if used appropriately. He helps the teen that is transgender, and he ends up being very caring for people that he initially did not care for at all. This is important, because it shows that a person can be constantly improving, even once they get older in age, and now so many people excuse others for being old and saying that they cannot change, but it is possible.
This was a very funny movie, but it also broached some serious subjects. There were a few times in the theater where some guys laughed during suicide scenes, where I felt like it was not aiming to be funny, but they did make it a little ambiguous as if it was supposed to be comedic or not. So that was probably my biggest issue with the whole film, that they had a hard time with the perception of tone at time with serious subject matter. I also wished I would have had more of an idea going into it, how serious it was going to be. With that being said, it was a good movie. I really enjoyed my time at the theater, and of the movies I have seen in 2023 so far, which is only a few, it was the best. I gave it 3.5 Stars, and I would recommend seeing it. It is not necessarily a movie theater movie, but it is always good to support the theater and a legend like Tom Hanks!
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