Movie review: A Man Called Ove

Warning: spoilers.

A Man Called Ove opens with a predictable sitcom premise. A very grumpy, pedantic old man enforces neighborhood rules, shouting at young people for any minor infractions, no matter how small. He shouts at minimum wage employees and neighbors alike, as he stomps on his self-righteous path.

You’d be forgiven for expecting this film to be a comedy, à la As Good As It Gets. But you couldn’t be more wrong. Rather, A Man Called Ove is a grimdark Hank Hill fanfic, with names changed to avoid copyright disputes.

The movie wants us to believe that the old man, Ove, is a difficult man to get to know. But the truth is, he actually loves blabbing about the details of his past life, and does so for the majority of the movie.

Half of A Man Called Ove consists of flashbacks. The first and second flashbacks seem innocent enough, if a bit cliché. But by the third, you begin to notice a pattern. Ove is perfect.

The moment I realized Ove is a Mary Sue was when, in like the third or fourth flashback, he runs into a building engulfed in flames in his pajamas, single-handedly saving a whole family, while a whole group of onlookers do nothing.

Because that would be a major event for any character to go through. Yet for Ove, it’s only one of his incredible moment throughout his maudlin lifestory.

By the time I got to the flashbacks with his wife, I knew this film was fucking bonkers. Predictably, young Ove is smitten by a woman who seems out of his league (yet she’s the one who does the initiating). On their first date, he admits he has no money. Completely flustered, he says “I clean trains. I have no home. I have to go now.”

And for some reason, the love interest is staring at him with bedroom eyes. He gets up to leave, and she pulls him into her makes out with him in the restaurant full of people.

To reiterate, his words were: “I clean trains. I have no home. I have to go now.”

Midway through the movie, I was so fucking tired of the flashbacks. I felt like nothing constructive could happen because of them. Instead of living in the moment, we’re just reliving these melodramatic, soap opera memories.

Sometimes in writing, what the audience doesn’t know can be more impactful than what they do.

There’s a scene where the young woman asks Ove if he ever had kids. He turns away, avoiding eye contact, and simply says “no,” followed by an awkward pause.

I liked the way this scene was framed. It left some room for mystery. Maybe he was just saying no. Maybe he and his wife could never conceive, and it was a point of strain. Maybe he has a child who doesn’t speak to him. We can’t know for sure.

But of course, being that this is A Man Called Ove, I knew a corny and drawn-out flashback would later come anyway.

The flashback comes after his friend asks him to leave her house. Multiple times. Instead of leaving, he just sits there sadly. Then he starts flashing back to the sob story: his wife, beautiful, young, and pregnant. A vacation in Spain. Their tour bus, suddenly rolling off a cliff. She loses her baby^[1] and her ability to walk and the Swedish government refuses to build a ramp at her workplace and Ove spends a whole night building a ramp at her workplace and he becomes a disability rights champion.

Meanwhile, in the present timeline, he rarely ever visits his disabled friend, Rune, and Rune’s spouse/caretaker has to beg him to help with a simple task at her house that she can’t do herself. Ove’s retired, and Rune is his friend. WTF is his excuse? Help out for fuck’s sake.

Stories are interesting when characters realize that they’re wrong about something.

Instead, Ove is always right. His obsession with minor rule violations that aren’t really hurting anybody, actually turns out to always be right.

The guy who he yells at for driving to his disabled friend’s house? He’s not just an average guy, doing a job that helps Rune. He turns out to be an extremely evil, mustache-twirling villain, trying to swindle Rune and his family.^[2]

Later on, a random gay NPC magically appears so that Ove can say something insensitive to him and then act oblivious about it, in a scene that lasts 30 seconds. Two nights later, Ove holds the barrel of a shotgun up to his chin for an uncomfortably long time (I know, I know, fuck this movie), before somebody knocks on his door. It’s the gay guy (who we’ve known for 30 seconds) and his friend. His friend says, “Hey, my gay friend came out. His family is unsupportive. He has nowhere to go, could he stay with you for tonight?”

So I get the gay man is going through a crisis, but out of all the people, connections, and options that these two people probably have, what made them think, “Oh yeah, what about that Boomer from the cafe? The guy who approached you and said, ‘What are you, one of those gays?’ He seems like he could be a safe guy.”

The reason they thought of Ove is because they literally just exist so that the audience will clap for Ove when he says “Um, sure.”

Do you see a pattern here? This is not writing. These are just cheap, emotional shortcuts to force the audience to feel something for Ove.

Ove shouts at minimum wage employees over minor inconveniences (which everyone else also experiences without screaming at oblivious staff.) This is rude and inexcusable. But throughout the whole movie, we’re instead given reasons to sympathize with this character and forgive his actions rather than see him humbled. He never apologizes, never changes. Instead, the twist is when we learn his heart is actually too big! Awww, how ironic. How could we be so wrong about this crotchety old boomer?

Ove can tell all the flashbacks he wants. I don’t care because none of this changes who he is in the actual story. In the present moment, all we have is a man being rude and thinking he can get away with it because he has a Sad Backstory™.

Everybody has a backstory – often sad ones, too. And old people definitely have backstories. This does not automatically make a story.

A Man Called Ove is hollow, containing no real theme or message, not even a corny one. I’m just supposed to worship a fictional character. And for as much work as this movie does to keep Ove alive, how do you guess it ends?

Instead, I come away with a headcanon: that Ove is an extremely unreliable narrator. After all, all the flashbacks come from his perspective. I would love a version of the story that retells these events from other people’s perspective.

I suspect the reason why anyone enjoys this film is because it subconsciously reminds them of better movies. Skip this and literally just watch Up, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or King of the Hill.