A Man Called Otto, directed by Mark Forster, is a feel-good flick adapted from a popular Swedish novel by Fredrick Backman. I haven’t read the book or seen the 2015 Swedish movie adaptation, but the new American film falls squarely under the storytelling umbrella of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: a grump terrorizes his community, then rejoins it upon rediscovering the joys of love.
But the central casting of professional nice guy Tom Hanks telegraphs that this movie isn’t much interested in the “terrorizing” half of the equation. Indeed, Forster has stacked the deck for Otto by legitimizing his supposedly grumpy complaints in the first section of the movie. He has surrounded Otto with a carnival of newfangled weirdos in (of course) California: one neighbor, to get his daily steps in, marches up and down the block like Frosty the Snowman; another, so bad is his driving, nearly backs through his new rental house upon arriving. No one for miles, it seems, can perform basic property maintenance.
And even this neighborhood of ineffectual dopes pales in comparison to the dystopian mob that awaits outside of it: when a man falls on the train tracks at a local station, anonymous teenagers film the scene greedily for social media clout.
The problem with setting up the story like this is that it mitigates the intended emotional payoff. Whereas Ebenezer Scrooge goes from the town’s biggest miser to its biggest benefactor, Otto Anderson barely changes at all over the course of the story. He’s nice all along. Even the movie’s basic symbolism reiterates this: whereas the Grinch’s heart, for example, memorably grows three sizes, Otto’s is already secretly big. This crucial difference separates a moving, classic story from an average tearjerker.
The important dynamic is forgiveness. We love to forgive characters for their misdeeds, as we do with Scrooge, the Grinch, and many others. But if A Man Called Otto is any indication, contemporary studios doubt our capacity to do this. Otto can’t be made to commit any real misdeeds, because if he did, we wouldn’t forgive him when he tried to rectify them. He has to stand up to corporate developers, talk to his dead wife, have black friends, etc., from the beginning—because we’re apparently too sanctimonious to welcome him back into the fray if he truly stepped out of line.
This disheartening, cynical view of modern audiences is, in my opinion, inaccurate. After all, don’t we still cherish A Christmas Carol and its best spinoffs even after many years? While a vocal few might jump to cancel a protagonist after Act I, people in general are forgiving, and they can tolerate stories of misguided people who change for the better.
The unnecessary trepidation from the studio, though, has left us with something like a cross between Gran Torino (2008) and Sesame Street. With a movie about a mean old man whose meanness consists of…enforcing traffic regulations.
But maybe this is just what you’re looking for to start 2023. A Man Called Otto has positive messages, funny moments, and reflective scenes. It’s a light, enjoyable film. It just doesn’t have the courage to reach for the classic pathos of its predecessors.
–Jim Andersen
For more movie reviews, see my review of Top Gun: Maverick.