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A Man Called Otto
Despite the accustomed splendid performance from two time Oscar winner Tom Hanks, the 2022 film A Man Called Otto suffers from an overly detailed screenplay that offers a little more information to the viewer than necessary.
Hanks plays Otto Anderson, a grumpy widower who has never gotten over the death of his wife, Sonya, and has vowed to her and himself that he will join her via suicide (the opening scene finds Otto in a store buying rope with which to hang himself). Much to his chagrin, Otto finds his mission to end his life complicated by a pregnant Latino housewife named Marisol, his guilt about his friend Ruben's Parkinson's disease which has turned him into a vegetable, and a young transgender youth who was a student of Sonya's.
This film's origin is a novel called A Man Called Ove", which was adapted into a 2015 Swedish film. In terms of intentions, this film hits a bullseye, going a lot of the places you expect it go, even though initially it comes off as a rehash of Jack Nicholson's About Schmidt or Woody Harrelson's Wilson, but additional layers are revealed here that take this story to another level than those films. Unfortunately, these layers come out in the form of several flashback sequences that are supposed to legitimize why Otto is the way he is, but they take all the mystery out of the Otto character and take all the work away from the viewer. Imagine if Lawrence Kasdan had stuck to his original concept for The Big Chill and kept in all of Kevin Costner's scenes as Alex? The mystery appeal of Alex as a character would have been quashed and the empathy we're supposed to have for Otto disappears here because the screenplay does all the work, leaving nothing to the imagination or to Tom Hanks. Not to mention that Otto makes four attempts to kill himself during the film and he is interrupted by a knock at his door every time...are we really supposed to believe that Otto didn't see this as some sort of sign?
Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland; Stranger Than Fiction) offers sensitive guidance to Hanks and the rest of the cast, but this story would have been so much more powerful if the screenwriters and Forster had trusted the story to the Otto character and kept him in the present, where the presentation of his past from his lips would have been so much more powerful than the flashbacks peppered throughout the film, which just made the film longer than it needed to be.
Hanks is always worth watching though and this film is no exception and he gets terrific support from Mariana Trevino, in a star-making performance as Marisol. Thomas Newman's beautifully understated music is also a big plus, I just wish that a little more of what happens in this movie was left to present day Otto and to our imaginations.
Despite the accustomed splendid performance from two time Oscar winner Tom Hanks, the 2022 film A Man Called Otto suffers from an overly detailed screenplay that offers a little more information to the viewer than necessary.
Hanks plays Otto Anderson, a grumpy widower who has never gotten over the death of his wife, Sonya, and has vowed to her and himself that he will join her via suicide (the opening scene finds Otto in a store buying rope with which to hang himself). Much to his chagrin, Otto finds his mission to end his life complicated by a pregnant Latino housewife named Marisol, his guilt about his friend Ruben's Parkinson's disease which has turned him into a vegetable, and a young transgender youth who was a student of Sonya's.
This film's origin is a novel called A Man Called Ove", which was adapted into a 2015 Swedish film. In terms of intentions, this film hits a bullseye, going a lot of the places you expect it go, even though initially it comes off as a rehash of Jack Nicholson's About Schmidt or Woody Harrelson's Wilson, but additional layers are revealed here that take this story to another level than those films. Unfortunately, these layers come out in the form of several flashback sequences that are supposed to legitimize why Otto is the way he is, but they take all the mystery out of the Otto character and take all the work away from the viewer. Imagine if Lawrence Kasdan had stuck to his original concept for The Big Chill and kept in all of Kevin Costner's scenes as Alex? The mystery appeal of Alex as a character would have been quashed and the empathy we're supposed to have for Otto disappears here because the screenplay does all the work, leaving nothing to the imagination or to Tom Hanks. Not to mention that Otto makes four attempts to kill himself during the film and he is interrupted by a knock at his door every time...are we really supposed to believe that Otto didn't see this as some sort of sign?
Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland; Stranger Than Fiction) offers sensitive guidance to Hanks and the rest of the cast, but this story would have been so much more powerful if the screenwriters and Forster had trusted the story to the Otto character and kept him in the present, where the presentation of his past from his lips would have been so much more powerful than the flashbacks peppered throughout the film, which just made the film longer than it needed to be.
Hanks is always worth watching though and this film is no exception and he gets terrific support from Mariana Trevino, in a star-making performance as Marisol. Thomas Newman's beautifully understated music is also a big plus, I just wish that a little more of what happens in this movie was left to present day Otto and to our imaginations.