OTTO ECLECTIC

OTTO MAKES THE MOST OUT OF EVERYDAY LIFE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

A little piece of everybody is that home improvement person in the hardware store practicing hit and miss with the right size component for a home improvement project.

Tom Hanks creates that character inside everyone who wanders about the aisles of a hardware store wanting to self-fix.

But while Otto finds the best fit from what the store has to offer, his exactitude does not ring out at the till.

Director Marc Foster uses this inability to sync needs and wants with what reality can offer as a narrative device for a film about a widower still grieving the loss of his wife.

Hanks is cast well in this tragic comedy with his ability for deadpan humor being delivered in a figurative and a literal manner.

The script is filled with interesting characters as occupation of units in a single unit row housing project finds people thrown together in a mish mash community of neighbors.

The main narrative is about the widower adjusting through the grieving process after a long marriage. But a second narrative also ages the protagonist as a person not yet embracing the technology age of robo calls, cell phones and on-line services.

Foster shows though that Otto has a lot of practical knowledge to offer the tech generation such as free driving lessons for his new neighbour.

Mariana Trevino plays Otto’s new neighbour Marisol who is unintentionally a busy body but who also unknowingly indirectly saves Otto’s life by her warm hearted neighborliness.

Otto has afterall become suicidal, after the passing of his beloved wife. Otto visits Sonya’s gravesite several times during the narrative, and each time falling deeper and deeper into the psychodrama.

Foster weaves the narrative tighter and tighter using Otto’s flashbacks to his younger life with his wife to underscore the fragility of moments as a widower.

Poignant moments are woven together from the movie real time reality and the flash backs until the director obtains an emotive response from audience members.

For example, in a fit of exasperation, Otto offers to parallel park his neighours car and trailer, but his frustration melts away when he finds their two young children happy and laughing at him in the back seat of their car.

This delicate moment is juxtaposed with Otto’s near recent attempt at suicide, while triggering flashbacks to a younger life when he still identified as husband and wife.

Otto makes other suicide attempts, and each time the psychodrama dreamscapes become more frequent and more and more poignant.

The details upset Otto, but the director underscores that the world is flawed because of the inability of society to get those little details correct at first instance.

A second suicide attempt sends Otto to a train station where he first asked Sonya out on a date, many years ago.

Truman Hanks plays a good young Otto to Tom Hanks’ leading character, while CGI is used to make Tom Hanks and Peter Lawson Jones, who plays Otto’s neighbour Reuben, a few years younger.

All the themes merge when Otto tries to kill himself by jumping in front of a commuter train, but another man beats him to it while everyone’s first reaction on the train station platform is to capture the moment on their phones rather than helping the man off the tracks before the train runs him over.

Foster presents the story of an everyday life that can become more interesting by paying attention to the details. Otto has those flashbacks of a grieving widower, but Sonya’s spirit also appears in the windows and the mirrors of Otto’s home.

This film gradually draws the viewers in as the narrative becomes more and more intertwining and creates many heartfelt moments in the process.

Tom Hanks is a 2023 SFF(B) nominee for his portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis (2022). Hanks has also been featured in the Iconic Movies Steven Spielberg and Iconic Movies Ron Howard, and appeared in reviews for A Beautiful Day in the Neighorhood (2019) Greyhound (2020) and Elvis (2022).