Film Review: A Man Called Otto

by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

    It’s a given: Social workers face horrific days with our clients when we know better than to respond to the well-intended question, “How was your day?”  For if we try, we may well be asked, “How can you spend your days like this? Why do you do this?”   

     My advice for these days: Go home; respond to only what is necessary; take a long, hot bath (whenever possible, pick a home with a tub, a highly undervalued retreat); and then visit Tom Hanks and company in his 2022 dramedy, A Man Called Otto.

     Hanks has openly shared that his wife Rita Wilson and her family taught him to love—a primary theme of Otto—and the Hanks family is heavily invested in an uplifting and heartening escape from familial and societal cruelty. Hanks and Wilson are two of the film’s producers. The soundtrack album features the single “Til You're Home,” written by Wilson and David Hodges and performed by Wilson and Sebastián Yatra. Hanks’ son Truman plays Otto as a young man, dearly and convincingly.   

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