A burger from McDonald’s is never going to win a Michelin star but you always know what you are going to get. The consistency is legendary. You know what you are going to get and it delivers on that promise.
Now I wouldn’t call Tom Hanks the McDonlands of movies. He is a phenomenal actor, but what I will say is that you know he is going to deliver a great performance and elevate whatever material he is in.
A Man Called Otto (dir. Marc Foster) is an adoption of a novel by Fredrik Backman called A Man Called Ove. Hanks plays the titular Otto. Otto is an ornery widower who makes sure that everything in his housing area is up to code. No one is immune from his ever-vigilant gaze. We first meet Otto at the hardware store where he wants to buy 5 feet of rope but they only sell it by the yard so they want to charge him more than he wants to buy. You quickly get an idea of who this man is.
He has lived in the house for decades, with his wife until she passed away. There are new housing developments springing up that are ruining, in his mind, the character of the place. He knows and puts up with all of the neighbours. They seem to have a genuine warmth for him but he has only contempt for most of them.
New neighbours appear who ruin his tranquillity and sense of order: Marisol (Mariana Trevino), her husband (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and their two daughters, with another on the way. Otto is a wildly practical man and Marisol requires his assistance for things around their new house. Otto reluctantly agrees to help and Marisol thanks him and starts to insert herself and her family into Otto’s life.
Hanks has now entered his cantankerous phase of his career. He has been loveable goofballs, moved on to more serious roles, played the role of a leading man for years, and now he is ageing into the old man zone. It does seem strange to see him being mean to people, but like everything he does, he does it well. You can feel real condescension towards the people that Otto lives near.
On the surface, this film appears to be lighthearted but has some very dark moments that are balanced out with some levity. It explores themes of loss, family, and community. It does play the familiar beats of someone stuck in their ways and has their world re-imagined by some new people with different world views coming into it.
Walking out of the film I saw many people with red eyes and some still crying. It is not a classic that will stand the test of time, but Hanks still delivers what people will be looking forward to in this type of film.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
27 December 2022