A Man Called Otto (2022)
Until now.
A Man Called Otto is about a caricature living in what appears to be the only cul-de-sac on the entire planet inhabited by fellow caricatures who all do the exact same thing every single day. No one works. No one has a life. They exist only for this plot.
Let's start with Otto. Every day he gets up, goes for a walk, comes across an apparent dunce doing a workout that no one on earth would ever do or has ever done, gets annoyed about it, and continues wandering around moaning, grumbling, and generally being an absolute arsehole to everyone he meets. He then tries to kill himself and fails. That is all he does.
For the first time in celluloid history the filmmakers have managed to do the impossible: they make you actually hate Tom Hanks. His character is one-note to the point of being offensive to the words 'one' and 'note'. It is so devoid of nuance that you start to see why AI generated movies have been considered a viable option by studio heads. In reality, if someone was this much of a bellend, no one would give him the time of day. But in the world created by director Marc Forster, everyone is so helplessly full of beans that they just bludgeon through the fact that Otto is horrendous and treat him with kindness and love. Especially Otto's new neighbours - a young Latin family who don't seem to notice any of his personality defects and instead focus on being untroubled and delightful.
This part of the plot is executed in such a way that you can't help but feel offended for the entire continent of Central and South America. The implication being that they are simple peasant folk whose feeble foreign brains couldn't possibly comprehend the ocean of melancholy that the elderly white male suffers in this day and age. How could they understand the decline of America, those silly foreigners? They're just happy to be there. There is actually a moment where the mother of this family actually says "What? Que?". Which means that someone would have had to write, on a script, the words "Mariana then says 'What? Que?'". Which in turn means that she actually said "What? What?". I think that pretty much sums up what we're dealing with here.
There is also a cat. I'm still not sure why.
And so follows and endless plod through one situation after another where Otto gives us nothing to root for. There are a series of flashbacks which attempt to explain why he is such a snide and these serve only to highlight that nepotism should be treated as a crime. Truman Hanks, playing the young Otto, can't act his way out of a paper bag. Bless his heart, he's trying, but his expressions for meeting the love of his life and having his arm cut off will be the same. Also, even if he went through unspeakable tragedy, as many people do, you don't have to be a relentless dick because of it.
Otto is a man truly without merit. His use of word 'idiot', probably about 1400 times, in this film is lazy and only serves to further illustrate his latent narcissism. We get it, he misses his dead wife. But can he please have one redeeming quality? It's not much to ask. How are we supposed to root for someone who is so one-dimensional?
The suicide sub-plot is, again, offensive to anyone who has ever considered suicide or succumbed to it. It is handled with the sensitivity of someone who has little experience in this field and comes across as a callous attempt to tug at the heart strings. Whoever said "sentimentality needs to be earned" might have a brain haemorrhage by minute forty.
Speaking of which, I fully admit I am a man who loves a good cry. I can barely sit through the opening of Wall-E without becoming a jibbering mess. Christmas John Lewis ads? I melt like snow in Zanzibar. So, I thought to myself "Tom Hanks, grieving, on a rainy Sunday night? Get the bloody Kleenex". Yet no. I felt not a twinge of emotion throughout this film. It's all so glib and unwaveringly false. Not one person feels real. You can't blame Hanks. This is probably the only bad movie we've ever seen him in. It's just like he's suddenly been thrust into a Hallmark movie without his knowledge and been asked to play a suicidal Dick Dastardly. He even grumbles under his breath like Muttley. My god. Insufferable stuff.
Long story short, this film was extremely disappointing, sanctimonious and completely beneath it's star. Luckily he's come back to fine form in multiple films since the release of this one, so it may have to go down as simply a blip on an otherwise smooth upward trajectory. Maybe I just completely missed the point. Maybe there was no point to miss. I suppose only time can be the judge.
★☆☆☆☆
JB
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