A Man Called Otto (2022)

Ironic, isn’t it? Tom Hanks always needs to be the person everyone likes. In this film, he is definitely playing against type. The fact that Rita, his wife, had something to do with the production is telling.

Otto’s backstory is told in a series of flashbacks, as he is reviewing his life during several of his suicide attempts.

Otto Anderson is a 63-year-old widower, living in a rowhouse in suburban Pittsburgh. Six months after losing his wife Sonya, a schoolteacher, Otto has become a cynical, fastidious crank. Pushed into retirement from his job at a steel plant, he cancels his utilities and plans to kill himself to join his late wife.

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Normally, I would avoid films like this, but someone in Susan’s family insisted that we would enjoy it.

I hadn’t realized that Hanks’ son, Truman, played his younger self. Susan noted his name in the opening credits but I didn’t recognize him during the film.

Here they are together at the premiere:

So, if you want a couple of hours of good amusing entertainment with a huge dollop of pathos, I can heartily recommend this film. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and, in the end, you’ll understand the life’s purpose of a seemingly grumpy old man whose heart was just too big for his body.