A man called Otto (Tom Hanks)

(Amazon UK link)

A few months ago I read and very much liked the book ‘A man called Ove’, by Fredrik Backman. I already knew that there was a film based on the book, and had put it on my wishlist. I received ‘A man called Otto’ for my birthday, a few months before reading the book. But we hadn’t got around to watching it until last night. 

I was aware that Tom Hanks played the title role in the film. When I read the book, I imagined him in the part, and thought he was perfect for it. I don’t know why the title character’s name was changed from Ove to Otto, but it wasn’t a big deal. And while the book is set in a small town in Sweden, the film is set in a small town in the United States. There are other changes, too, which irritate some fans of the book. But they didn’t worry me. 

The film opens when Otto is trying to buy some rope, arguing with the sales assistant about the cost. It’s a good way to portray his extreme pedantry and precision of outlook. He is a very organised, controlled person who likes to follow the same routine every day. And as I expected, Tom Hanks is wonderful in this role. He is exactly as I had imagined Otto. 

After his purchases, we see him patrolling the grounds of the complex where he lives. He checks that the recycling bins are used correctly (and moves items placed in the wrong ones). And he gets into an angry debate with a delivery van who has - in Otto’s mind - trespassed by driving onto their private road without a permit. 

There are some new neighbours trying to move in. In the book they are a Persian family, but in the film they’re Mexican. But they are similar in outlook - very open-hearted, generous, and expecting everyone to be friendly. The wife, Marisol (Mariana Treviño) loves to bake, and regularly takes things to Otto. She has two children and is heavily pregnant. Her husband Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is kind, a bit naive and not all that bright. 

In the book there are a lot of neighbours - too many for me to keep track of. In the film, the only ones we get to know somewhat are Jimmy, who likes to keep fit; Malcolm, a teenager who first irritates Otto by leaving his bicycle in the wrong place, and an older couple, Anita and Reuben, who used to be close to Otto and his wife. But Reuben has some form of dementia, and Anita isn’t well either. Oh, and there’s also a woman with a dog who clashes regularly with Otto… and there’s a cat who won’t go away. 

The story itself is not one that would normally be thought of as suitable for a light novel or film. Otto does not want to live any longer. He’s recently retired, and as we quite quickly learn in the film, his beloved wife died within the past year. It takes much longer for this to be obvious in the book, which is quite complicated in places with flashbacks. 

The film makes it much clearer - the only flashbacks are the ones in which we learn about Otto’s relationship with Sonia (Rachel Keller). I thought they were very well done, with a younger man in Otto’s role. Truman Hanks is apparently Tom Hanks’ son, which is perhaps why he feels right for this part, despite not looking all that similar. 

During the course of the film, Otto attempts more than once to end his life. It could have been traumatic, but each time something happens - either the attempts fails, or he’s interrupted with something else. He can’t avoid answering doors, or helping people when they’re in trouble. Despite his grumpy, rigid attitudes, he’s altruistic and caring deep down. 

It’s character-based, and inevitably in an hour and a half can’t cover everything from a full-length novel. We don’t see much of Otto’s childhood, for one thing, or how he started work. But I thought that, overall, it was extremely well-done. There’s humour - often in Tom Hanks’ perfect timing of a remark - and light-heartedness in the joy of the Mexican family. There are also some deeper issues touched on: the role of the state in deciding where elderly folk should live, for instance, and how to relate to a transgender person. They’re done sensitively, and leave much to think about.

The pace is just right, the acting excellent, albeit caricatured (deliberately) in some cases. The ending is poignant, and yet there’s no other ending that would have worked. And it leads to positive changes in the lifestyle and expectations of others. 

The rating is 15 in the UK (PG-13 in the United States) which reflects the nature of the film rather than anything specific. There’s nothing remotely sexual, and only mild bad language. There’s some mild gore, but nothing gratuitous, and Otto’s first attempt at taking his life is quite traumatic, so it’s not a film I’d want a child to see, or a sensitive or depressed teenager. Nor would it be appropriate for anyone likely to be negatively triggered by a story about someone who wants to kill himself.

But, with those provisos, we thought it a very good film. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Heidi (Emma Bolger)

(Amazon UK link)

As a child I loved the book ‘Heidi’, which I had initially in abridged form. It’s the classic story of an orphaned girl who is sent to live with her hermit-like grandfather who lives high in the Swiss alps. Grandfather is rather spurned by the people of the local village, who fear him due to some damaging rumours. 

Heidi is lively and friendly, and her grandfather, despite his rather dour appearance, becomes very fond of her. She loves the simple life in the mountains and befriends Peter, the goatherd, who is the son of their nearest neighbours. When her aunt appears to take Heidi into the town to work as a companion to a wealthy disabled girl, Clara, Heidi is heartbroken… 

It’s a delightful story, one which I think I should read again some time soon. We watched the 2005 film adaptation on DVD over twelve years ago, and decided to watch it again last night. And it sticks pretty closely to the original story. The scenery is stunning, and given that it’s not a long film (not much over an hour and a half) it packs in plenty without adding anything unnecessary. The pace is good, and we were both engrossed in the story. 

But we were both disappointed by the three main child actors. We weren’t sure if they were over-directed, or if they weren’t involved enough in the story to be really believable. Emma Bolger plays nine-year-old Heidi, and she does it as an enthusiastic, animated child. She has a slight Irish accent, which is a little weird, but I quickly got used to that. However she shows little emotion at the more poignant times. When she has to wait (more than once) outside her grandfather’s chalet, she doesn’t look at all anxious or afraid. When she’s supposedly crying, there are no tears - just some artificial-sounding sniffs. When she’s tossing and turning in bed, it doesn’t look real at all. 

Worse is Clara (Jessica Claridge), who comes across as likeable but rather twee, as if she’s repeating her lines rather than acting. And although Peter is more believable, he seems much too clean to be a believable goatherd. And his jealousy of Clara, later in the film, is not really explored at all and doesn’t seem to fit with what we see of his character in the earlier scenes. 

However, I thought that Heidi’s grandfather (Max von Sydow) was excellent. I could believe in him entirely as a lonely, irritable old man whose heart is softened by his lively granddaughter. I wasn’t sure why he seemed so old - he could have passed for eighty, which seems to me the age of a great-grandfather to a nine-year-old girl. But that wasn’t a huge issue and only occurred to me towards the end. 

Diana Rigg is also very well cast as Clara’s grandmama. She comes across as a delightful, realistic woman who looks as if she’s in her late sixties. She’s kind and understanding, and quite lively too.  And I liked Sebastian (Del Synott), the servant in Clara’s household, who befriends Heidi. His face is very expressive at times, as he attempts to be discreet and almost invisible serving at table, but also reacts to Heidi’s liveliness and naivete. There are one or two quite amusing scenes involving Sebastian, where his facial expressions made us chuckle. 

There are two obviously caricatured adult characters in the film. Pauline McLynn plays Heidi’s strict, penny-pinching aunt, and Geraldine Chaplin is the appalling Miss Rottenmeier, who for some reason is employed as housekeeper at the house where Clare lives. Neither is supposed to be liked, and the exaggerated nastiness is a good ploy in a children’s film, so that - hopefully - they’re not taken too seriously, and therefore won’t provoke nightmares.

It’s a story about families, and friendship; about loyalty and the importance of looking out for other people.  Despite the rather wooden acting of the younger people, I would recommend it, on the whole. The rating is U, and that reflects the wholesome story with a lack of anything that would merit a stricter rate. I don’t think it would be of much interest to anyone younger than about seven or eight, but for older children and teens (and adults who loved the book as children) it’s a good adaptation. 

Our DVD doesn’t have any extras. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Noises off (Michael Caine)

(Amazon UK link)

We’ve had the DVD of the film ‘Noises off’ for a long time. It was made in 1992 and I’m pretty sure we acquired the DVD early in our time in Cyprus, probably the late 1990s. I expect I watched it, too, but had no memory of it at all. Neither did my husband. But it looked like a light and possibly humorous film so we decided to watch it last night. Apparently the film was based on a play of the same name. 

It opens to a scene of traffic somewhere in the United States, and commentary from Lloyd (Michael Caine), worried about a theatre production called ‘Nothing on’. It’s billed as a sex farce from London. Lloyd wanders around the foyer of the theatre, but can’t bring himself to go in. He explains that it’s gone from bad to worse. 

Then the action takes us back to the dress rehearsal months earlier. It was taking place late at night and Lloyd tries to keep his temper as more and more actors forget their lines or directions. We meet the housekeeper Dotty (Carol Burnett) who has to answer a phone, then put down a plate of sardines and remove a newspaper. She keeps forgetting what she has to do, and is somewhat over-acting anyway. 

As she vanishes, finally, into the kitchen, John (Gary Lejeune) arrives with Brooke (Nicollette Sheridan) on his arm. They’re clearly there for an assignation. John assures her they are alone, and tells her that he owns the place. Brooke is not very bright, or observant, although the character she plays is quite seductive. 

After some misunderstandings they disappear into a bedroom, only to have the front door opened again to reveal another couple on an assignation. There’s a lot of cleverly done choreography as doors open and close, different people noticing - or not noticing - each other. Dotty keeps appearing with plates of sardines which are accepted or moved… and even though Lloyd keeps having to stop to remind people of lines or stage directions, it’s all rather cleverly done. 

However there are clearly different relationships off-stage. Lloyd, we learn, is intimate with Poppy (Julie Hagerty) who is the prompter, and general backstage manager. But she’s not the only one. I rather lost track of who was keen on whom, and it didn’t seem to matter as there was a lot of chaos, albeit well done.

After this dress rehearsal, there are two more sections of the film - I imagine they were separate acts in the stage play. In the first, everyone just about manages to hold things together as we see the first half of the play again.  In the second location, more and more things go wrong as people make mistakes, or go missing, or miss their cues… there were several times when we smiled, or even chuckled as unexpected things happened or went wrong. 

It’s a good idea, and I expect worked very well as a stage play. It was a bit strange having just a handful of characters, almost everything taking place in the same stage set, or behind it, with only Michael Caine’s character appearing in the foyer or audience. But we quickly got used to it, and on the whole liked it.

The UK rating is 15 which seems rather high. Although ‘Nothing on’ is supposedly a sex farce, there’s nothing too inappropriate that happens. Plenty is implied, and one character does spend most of the play in her lacy underwear, but there aren’t any actual scenes of intimacy.  There’s some comedic violence, and some bad language (including a couple of incidences of ‘strong’ language) but it didn’t seem overdone, and I’d have thought a rating of 12 would have been more appropriate.

Having said that, it’s not for the prudish. Innuendoes abound, and there’s a lot of general silliness and some slapstick. It rises out of the mundane by the excellent choreography and impeccable comic timing, but it’s not one I’d particularly recommend. Still, it made a good evening’s light viewing, and on the whole we liked it.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews