So you take a Swedish bestseller (En mann ved navn Ove) made into a smash hit film, and you cast... Tom Hanks. That can't be bad can it?
Let's take the good parts first. The original story is stellar, and the Swedish film captures it almost perfectly. The American film isn't entirely disloyal to either. There. That's the upside.
Tom Hanks is of course an astute actor, and he isn't out of his depth here. But the problem is Rolf Lassgård did it better. Much better. I shall endeavour to explain. Hanks' Otto is depressed after the death of his wife, and this has made him grumpy. Hanks plays that as a bit of an homage to Walter Matthau's Max Goldman, though lighter on the comic side. Thankfully, as Matthau can't be topped there. Lassgård played Ove as a social awkward, who experienced life's joys much through his wife, and had his rougher edges trimmed by her. He did not really see the beauty of life without her. Hence he was misplaced, misunderstood and genuinely exasperated by his surroundings without her. The American Otto is a man with a temper, the Swedish Ove is gruff, but with an astute sense of fairness guiding him, as well as being generally extremely capable. That makes for a much better and more complex character. Hanks would probably be able to pull that off, so I blame director Mark Forster and the evil minions that re-arranged the script.
For the problem here is really that Forster has taken a rather simple story, with very complex characters, and dumbed it down for American viewers. It's like marketers saw the original and thought: "How can we make this simple, and modern, enough for morons?" And ahead they went. The aforementioned changes are mostly hurting Otto, but they've done the same to all the characters. The support cast are all stereotypes of the worst sort, and bring nothing of anything. Jimmy (Cameron Britton) is the most useless of the lot, as he is so daft and moronic that when he actually gets an important scene, he has no credibility left to carry it.
Though Forster is rather loyal to the original content, he makes one extra blunder. Leaving the father more or less out of it. Otto's relationship with his father is pivotal to who he has become as an adult, and to his lack of ability to function properly without his wife.
As this is an American versioned, the ending is abysmal and makes a mockery of all subtlety. But the source material is so good, and Hanks carries the film decently enough, so that when the driveway isn't shovelled one cold winter morning... You still care
6/10
