An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was starring Tom Hanks and was directed by Marc Forster, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, it turned out to be actually rather disappointing after all. I have to admit that I haven’t seen the original Swedish version called ‘En man som heter Ove’, it does seem that to have a decent reputation and I hope it is better than this (yet another) seemingly useless US remake. Basically, it felt like a live-action version of ‘Up’ with Tom Hanks pretending to be a grumpy guy. That was already the first issue, the fact that Hanks seemed to be miscast. Sure, it is always interesting when an actor of this caliber is cast against type. However, I’m afraid they picked up the sweetest American actor that might ever lived and there was not one second during which he was really convincing when he was trying to be mean to all this people. Another issue was the fact that it was just too predictable. I mean, when the movie started, they gave us some warning regarding suicide and, indeed, Otto did try to kill himself a couple of times but there wasn’t a single moment during which you actually worry about what happen to him. It was partially due to the fact that you know that, at some point, the guy will finally get this act together and became BFFs with his neighbors and also to the fact that the tone was just too light-hearted. Anyway, to conclude, I have to admit that the damned thing was still rather harmless so I guess it might still be worth a look, above all if you like the genre, but there is no doubt that it could or should have been much better considered the people who were involved.