“Idiots” who can’t properly sort their recycling, won’t clean up after their dogs, who fling unwanted ad circulars on every lawn and treat this gated, parking-by-permit-only oasis the way people do these days - as if “rules” are for “other” people - get an earful from Otto. Otto is an exacting 60something who expects everybody to follow the rules, especially in the townhouse subdivision he’s lived much of his life. The Swedes have a lot more experience with that sort of thing. It’s the film’s suicide attempts that don’t land as dark comedy laughs this time. The metaphor of a Swedish film about a lonely, suicidal widower who finds renewed purpose in the inept-at-home-ownership immigrants who move in across the street may translate. As I pointed out in my review of the Swedish film, “A Man Called Ove, “the bitter have their reasons.”īut the previous film and the novel it is based on work in ways this sunnier, sappier Hollywood one simply can’t. Tom Hanks cannot help but play the soft side of just such a codger in “A Man Called Otto,” a maudlin, drawn-out to the point of “endless” remake of an Oscar-nominated international hit from Sweden a few years back.ĭirector Marc Forster eschews action (“World War Z”) for his “Kite Runner/Finding Neverland” sentimental side in a movie that is affecting, here and there, and resonates because sad, embittered loneliness is a universal curse of old age. “Codgers” is our most affectionate name for them. And all the “idiots” around him, at work, at home and in life, are screwing that up. He lives, in his mind, in an ordered universe.
Every neighborhood has one, that perpetually prickly “You kids get off my lawn!” martinet.
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