Otto is a recent window accustomed to routine and bitterness. There’s a hole in his heart and he tries to fill it by “making rounds” and acting as the block’s hallway monitor. When this doesn’t work, he resorts to suicide, only to have his neighbors foil each attempt by breaking some archaic HOA rule. 

A Man Called Otto is the American remake of the 2015 Swedish film, A Man Called Ove. The plots of both movies are more-or-less the same. But in classic Hollywood tradition, director Marc Foster ramps up the sentimentality while parking the dry Scandinavian humor and replacing it with American optimism. 

America’s dad, Tom Hanks, plays the titular grump. It is an archetype Hanks was born to play. His performance is so natural it does not really feel like he is acting, instead reacting to his “idiot” neighbors. It is only in the rare glimpses of kindness, that we see the Hanks we’re accustomed to; the big, shy smile and expressive eyes. But those moments are seldom. Instead, we get dead eyes and frowns as Otto berates his neighbors. 

He wasn’t always like this. He was once young and relatively carefree. But he has chosen tragedies to define his life and is good at forgetting the good times. He reminds himself that he was once happy by clinging on to relics of his old life. He has not cleared out his wife’s belongings from his house and he carries around with him a lucky quarter she gave him on their first date.

The movie frequently cuts back to the salad days. The flashbacks do a lot of emotional heavy lifting, sometimes a little straining, but give us crucial context to understanding the modern curmudgeon, albeit in a Hallmark-esque way. His younger self (played by the star’s son, Truman Hanks) is a bit stale. Awkward yet likable, we see him stumble his way into a relationship with the much more charismatic Sonya (Rachel Keller). They are compatible. She gives his life “color,” and he provides dependability. 

It is clear that isolation has taken a toll on Otto, something we see through his interaction with his neighbors. He holds a decades-old grudge against his best friend, Reuben whom he blames for ousting him as president of the HOA. A transgender paper delivery boy called Malcolm temporarily disarms Otto with his earnestness. Jimmy down the street is friendly and tolerates Otto’s barbs about his “obnoxious” workout routine. But he saves his deepest rage towards the developers trying to take over the block and build condos. Otto meets his match when a young immigrant family moves in across the street.

The couple are carefree and renting, two words that don’t mesh with Otto’s vocabulary. The husband, Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), quickly becomes the butt of jokes as he is largely oblivious to the world around him. But Otto finds parity in the equally stubborn Marisol (Mariana Trevino). She is hard-headed but big-hearted and, above all else, she is dependable, a quality Otto can appreciate. She doesn’t remind him of a younger Sonya. Instead, she’s a younger Otto. Trevino delivers the film’s best performance as she juggles being a pregnant mom and standing up to Otto’s neuroses.  

Score 3 out of 5

Forster is adept at guiding us through Otto’s mood swings without making him seem too far gone. He errs on the side of sentimentality but isn’t that what we signed up for in the first place?