Seven years ago, a frankly peculiar, quirky dramedy-heartwarmer from Sweden appeared: A Man Called Ove, based on the bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman. It was about a grumpy old widower who snaps at everyone on his street – officiously enforcing the Neighbourhood-Watch-type rules about parking and recycling – and keeps on trying to take his own life. These attempts are continually thwarted when he spots some local outside his house breaking some bylaw and Ove can’t resist rushing out to remonstrate. But a nerdy, sweet-natured young couple move in next door and insist on befriending Ove, and their artless friendship relieves Ove’s repressed sadness and affords him redemption. Ove was played in the original by Rolf Lassgård (Wallander on Swedish TV) and now by Tom Hanks – renamed Otto – in this Hollywood remake from screenwriter David Magee and director Marc Forster. The goofy-friendly new neighbours are played by Mariana Treviño and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo.
Hanks’s performance amplifies and colourises the original curmudgeon, and his star-quality soups up the drama and makes a clearer sense of the backstory, yet the very fact of it being Hanks means that we never for a moment believe that he really is going to be that nasty (or that unhappy) for long. Soon, the lovable Hanks will surely reappear, and it duly does as the sad story of his late wife emerges in sucrose flashback – although she is always a bland cipher, not a convincing person. Finally, of course, Otto is going to be absolutely adorable. With his fierce short haircut and blank, open face he looks very familiar. Not grump, but Gump.
But just as with the original, the real problems come with those wacky unsuccessful attempts to kill himself; they represent the same jarring and baffling tonal misjudgment. Newspapers are very restricted about what they can describe on this subject; not so the cinema, which is (rightly) afforded artistic freedom. But the scenes with Hanks buying the means from a hardware store, arguing about the change with the manager, then unhilariously having to abandon his plan in order to tell someone off … it’s not serious enough to do justice to the subject, not dark enough for scabrous black comedy, or funny enough for comedy of any sort, being weirdly sentimental from the outset.
Otherwise, the movie follows the form of the original pretty faithfully, although the gay teenage boy that Ove helps in the first film is now trans. Hanks carries the film with his personality and his easy address to the camera, but this oddity of a film never quite comes to life.
• A Man Called Otto is released on 25 December in the US, on 1 January in Australia and on 6 January in the UK.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
