A movie like A Man Called Otto has been made before and probably going to be a rite de passage for many A-lister male actors for a while. Eventually, as they get older, they have to do the misanthropic crumudgeon role. Take Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt or Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino which this one resembles without all the racism and unnecessary violence and misogny. And they’re always playing a person upset that the world changed around them. That was basically half the plot of the first season of Tulsa King, so add Sylvester Stallone to the list.
And add Tom Hanks, who takes a career pause from making dadporn (not that kind) like Sully, Bridge of Spies and Greyhound to make a crotchety person who’s mad that the hardware store charges rope by the yard and not by the foot or that the UPS drivers are coming down a private road that’s for residents owner. Otto makes a comments about the other people, referencing Fed Ex as in Cast Away, don’t drive on the private road. Anyway, Otto’s one of those people who became more well known around the time Barack Obama ran for President and has constantly been seen in online videos and TV reports getting mad about something like mask mandates or having to use self-checkout.
To keep Otto Anderson from being a full-blown MAGA Boomer racist, Hanks (who coproduced and starred) along with writer David Magee and director Marc Foster decided Otto should be friendly with his black neighbors, Anita (Juanita Jennings) and her husband, Reuben (Peter Lawson Jones), who’s mostly wheelchair bound following a stroke. And he becomes friendly with new Latino neighbors, Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Marisol (Mariana Trevino who is the best thing), and provides a home for transgender paperboy Malcolm (Mack Bayda).
Unfortunately, all of this gives Otto the appearance of a White Savior, no matter how they try to make his complaints and gripes odd quirks. Yes, Otto is angry at Reuben because they used to have a rivalry between Fords and Chevys, but Reuben decided to get a Toyota one day instead of a Ford. Otto is a Chevy man and he prefers manual transmissions. This is how he meets Tommy and Marisol as Tommy is trying to back a U-Haul trailer in front of their new house across the street from them. Otto has branded himself the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood of townhouses with storage garages. We find out he used to be the president of the HOA but he went violent.
Otto can’t find anything to please himself. He criticizes the assistant manager of the hardwore store for being young (and a woman). Prior he had criticize a worker who asked for help when he noticed Otto using his own personal knife to cut the rope. This alone should make anyone who’s worked in the retail service industry immediately stop watching. But later we find out Otto is using the rope to hang himself, which should make anyone who’s ever suffered depression and/or suicidal throughts to stop watching.
You see Otto’s a widower as we only see his wife, Sonya (Rachel Keller) in flashbacks when she was younger as Hanks’ own son, Truman, plays young Otto. (What the hell?! They couldn’t cast Rita Wilson as older Sonya? Or were they afraid of the Freudian interpretations of Truman playing a man who’s wife ends up being played by his mother?) Anyway, Sonya had the big C so Otto was forced into retiring from the Pittsburgh area steel company. He’s also mad because the younger supervisor cut his hours and made him train a younger person who ended up being his supervisor too.
So, Otto is now the guy from Falling Down, but he’s not going on a rampage through Pittsburgh. He can’t even kill himself without first helping Tommy and Marisol who also wonder if he has an Allen wrench, but Tommy commits the “manly sin” of calling it a “Alvin wrench.” Anyway, when he finally gets around to hanging himself, it fails. But he’s already canceled his utilities so he’s going to find other ways.
But eventually, he’ll get friendly with Tommy and Marisol and their children, taking them to the hospital when Tommy falls off a ladder. And then he take in Malcolm, who makes a good coffee, when Malcolm’s father kicks him out. He eventually gets friendly with a stray cat that hangs around the area after it nearly freezes to death outside. What I didn’t understand was how long could Otto even live in his house if he cut off the utilities and not freeze to death himself. I guess he kept the gas on so he could turn the oven and stove on.
Otto continues to try to kill himself by running the carbon monoxide in the garage as well as trying to jump in front of the commuter trains. But he becomes a local hero when he helps another man who accidentally falls down on the tracks because all the younger people pull out their phones to record. And the only person who helps Otto up off the oncoming train is an older man himself. Jesus-fucking-Christ!
This movie really tries my patience. This is what happened to King of the Hill after Mike Judge and Greg Daniels left and it became a precursor to OK Boomer. As a matter of fact, this movie is actual more of Hanks dadporn. I can’t believe anyone under 60 would find this movie at all interesting to sit through for two hours. If you saw someone like Otto, you’d want to avoid him at all costs. Maybe if Kevin Costner leaves Yellowstone, they can get Hanks to take his place. He seems to already be fitting the touch.
Hanks just doesn’t work in the role. He’s too nice of a guy. It’s like his ill-conceived role as Col. Tom Parker in Elvis. It doesn’t fit. You can’t get cheers playing David S. Pumpkins on SNL and then play a creep like Parker or a mean old man like Otto. Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Douglas, Dennis Quaid and even Steve Martin could’ve played a role like this and made it work a lot better. I know Hanks wants to show his range, but he just play Mister Rogers a few years back.
Otto is based on A Man Named Ove, a Swedish movie based on the Swedish novel. I watched that movie and Rolf Lossgard was more convincing and suited in the role. It was also an entirely different story about a man who feels he’s had a harsh life and wants to end it as he’s become withdrawn. But in the end, he gets the family he never got to have with his late wife and find some happiness. This is a story about a Boomer who yells at clouds and is mad that no one knows how to write cursive and use a rotary phone.
You don’t have to spend two hours watching this movie. All you got to do is check our your uncle’s Facebook or that of someone you went to high school with who’s trying to get you involved in their MLM. People in this country like Otto are like the character in Falling Down, they set up all these things that benefited them but now they don’t like it now they find it doesn’t benefit them. It’s like in Waitress where the Jeremy Sisto character is an abusive toxic husband but they tried to make him a quirky man.
In real life, Otto is a very toxic person. Did Otto ever think of the older people working at the steel company when he was younger who saw themselves forced out? No. Otto’s about the kill himself with the rope. What does it matter if he’s going to be charge a few extra cents? Car manufacturers don’t make many vehicles that are stick shift now and they don’t teach driver’s ed in schools anymore. Since the movie follows basically the exact same plot as Ove, I recommend you watch Ove.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 