A Man Called Otto
Cert 15| ★★★✩✩

Hollywood’s Mr Nice Guy Tom Hanks stars in this remake of A Man Called Ove, Hannes Holm’s twice Oscar-nominated movie from 2015. That film became one of Sweden’s most watched of all time.

Directed by The Kite Runner and World War Z director Marc Forster, A Man Called Otto is produced by Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson and features an impressive debut from the couple’s youngest son, Truman. The story is now set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

After being forced into early retirement by an overzealous new manager, recently widowed factory worker Otto Anderson (Hanks) decides that life is no longer worth living without his soulmate and aims to take matters onto his own hands in a series of failed suicide attempts.

Things don’t quite go to plan when Marisol (Mariana Treviño), his very friendly and very pregnant new Latina neighbour, checks up on him night and day with offers of friendship and homemade food.

Otto’s initial dismay inevitably melts away and he finds himself warming to Marisol, her husband Jimmy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and their two young children.

As he learns to accept the newcomers into his life, Otto continues to be haunted by his late wife’s memory — shown in a series of flashbacks in which Otto is played by Truman Hanks.

While there is certainly a lot to like about this uplifting story in these very dark times, Otto is certainly the weaker of the two adaptations of Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel.

The cast give it their best, but are often let down by this uneven tragicomedy. The film’s biggest revelation has to be Truman Hanks, who in some scenes looks like a younger version of his father.

There is a welcome air of optimistic universality about this story that remains the driving force behind both films. A Man Called Otto may not be perfect, but its message is sure to resonate with a great number of people.