Skip to main content

A man called Otto

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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was
3 comments
Read more

Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this
2 comments
Read more

Wrinkle in Time Review

What I liked: I liked Charles Wallace, that kid was funny. I liked that the ladies in crazy dresses were warriors and that the kids were warriors too. You know me I'm all about a good action movie with awesome fighting, but I liked that at least in this universe the defining characteristics of warriors were compassion, kindness, and love. Similarly, I liked that the bad guys weren't launching a massive military conquest of the universe, I mean everyone is doing that these days. Surprisingly, I liked the Mrs's dresses. They were crazy and over the top but it was fun that they changed with every teleportation and that they were completely absurd. The outfits were rather like the Mrs's wearing them, over the top and fantastical. Knowing all of them from other shows I may have had some unfulfilled expectations. At no point did anyone say "You get a wrinkle, and you get a wrinkle, Everyone gets a wrinkle!" which I must admit was a little disappointing. I also think
2 comments
Read more