What I liked: I liked the book and this adaptation did a good job of highlighting the book's humor. I like that Otto really enjoyed his neighbor's cooking. I especially liked the frozen cat scene and the answering the door in the middle of the night scene, and playing the radio for the cat. I also liked the clown scene and that developing the backstory for the quarter helped rationalize the whole thing a bit. Product placements in movies are frequently a bit odd, I thought they did a good job with the cars and was entertained by the truck. The youtuber was also put to good use. I liked that they included a Swedish cafe and am curious about the semla. It was interesting that both this movie and
A Man Called Ove were very faithful to the book but both managed to be quite different especially in tone. I guess it is my American showing through, I preferred this one because I laughed more. Otto was so grudgingly helpful but you could see the whole time that he did have a big heart.
What I didn't: The most important take away from all versions of A Man Called Ove or Otto is that people need love and need to be needed to thrive. And really it takes surprisingly little. Another thread in the book and the Swedish version was that normal people banding together can stop the very organized and overwhelmingly powerful institutions in modern society- the government, massive corporations, etc. That didn't come through very much in this one, which is a shame because in the world of Ove those forces are the same ones that isolate people and make them feel useless.
Who should watch this? People who liked A Man Called Ove but wished it didn't feel quite so sad. People who wish they could run into an annoyed Tom Hanks in HomeDepot.
Would I watch it again? I liked seeing it and wouldn't say no to watching it again.
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