Movie Review: A MAN CALLED OTTO...

Earlier today, I watched the Marc Forster-directed dramedy A Man Called Otto at AMC theaters.

Based on the 2012 Fredrik Backman novel A Man Called Ove, A Man Called Otto is about a Pittsburgh widower who vents his grumpiness on everyone and everything he stumbles across...from the cashier at a local hardware store and morning joggers who ignore his disgruntled persona on the street as they greet him anyway, to the stray cat loitering on his front porch.

While A Man Called Otto was lighthearted and sweet, it still had a darkness about it as Otto Anderson—played by Tom Hanks—tried to find different ways to commit suicide due to his ever-growing loneliness after his wife Sonya (genially portrayed by Rachel Keller in flashbacks) passed away from cancer a few years earlier.

Otto thought that he could get away with treating everyone he met like garbage, until he's introduced to Marisol (cheerily played by Mariana Treviño), his new neighbor across the street.

While Marisol had a sweet cluelessness about her (Marisol couldn't drive even though she's in her 30s, and she's married to an imbecile who's as carefree as her), she didn't tolerate how Otto tried to dismiss her at the beginning...using her foot to prevent Otto from completely shutting his front door on her after they first met.

As expected with movies about grumpy old men who want to be left alone for the remainder of their lives, A Man Called Otto eventually found Anderson growing closer to Marisol and everyone else he knew. This didn't come as a surprise—seeing as how Otto did nice things to help other people at the same time he called them "idiots" and tried to blow them off.

Saving someone who fell onto a train track from the boarding platform after he suffered a cardiac issue, helping prevent long-time neighbors from being evicted from their home by a heartless real estate company, and taking a stray cat as your pet after finding it freezing in the snow outside your house one morning will do that to ya...

At the end of the movie, Anderson achieves his goal of reuniting with his wife (I won't spoil how, but it fortunately wasn't suicide), while leaving behind a legacy that will be continued by Marisol and other people who never gave up on Otto even as he tried to exclude them from his life.

A Man Called Otto is a film that's both entertaining and heartfelt... It's definitely a must-watch.