SnoopyStyle 59 year old Ove Lindahl is a grumpy man. Even a coupon can set him off in frustration. His beloved wife Sonja had recently passed away. He had been voted out as the president of the homeowners' association years earlier. He's pushed into early retirement at his job. He is angered by the whiteshirts and people driving on the local pathway. He tries to commit suicide but he's interrupted every time. There is the new neighbor family and the Persian wife who insists on being friends. Each suicide attempt comes with his past flashing before his eyes.This is hilarious. It is heart-warming and then it's heart-breaking. Suicide has never been funnier. I love Parvaneh and her relationship with Ove. Ove's love of Sonja is touching. It is the most human of stories. The performances, the writing, everything is great.

Corey James This review of A Man Called Ove is spoiler free**** (4/5)SENTIMENT IS A godsend, and to come across them these days is a real miracle that seemingly can't be done, in blockbusters maybe but in Hannes Holm's irresistible adaptation of Fredrik Backman's eponymous bestseller, A Man Called Ove has that and more. Holm gently matches beautiful material, emotional heft, and loving melodrama all in one and it's wonderful. Ove (Rolf Lassgård) is the grumpy man of the block – a 59-year-old retiree, who several years before the film's setting had been kicked out of the Condominium Association, yet he still angrily enforces rules for the isolated community, this turns him into the most hated man on the block. He writes down rules in his handy notepad, stops cars, and refuses to do the simplest tasks. He blames his wife's death on everyone and everything around him; he's always angry, shouting at people and terrifying animals. This perfect characterization comes with a flaw, he's terribly lonely, visiting the grave of recently deceased wife, and he tries to commit suicide. Until new neighbours move in. A young family of four. The young woman of this new family, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars) wants to meet her new neighbour, Ove doesn't want to know. Character-wise Ove is a lot like As Good As It Gets' Melvin Udall, he hates everyone and everything, until someone special takes a hold of his heart – that is Parvaneh and her two children. He starts to get used to her, he teaches her to drive, and he vows to baby-sit. And it's wonderful. Holms' direction is polished to near perfection, he handles Ove's story with fierce hands, there's no heavy touch, the way his camera moves through the community, the cemetery the detail is exquisite. It excels in its redemption tale setting, it's made with love, carefully mixing melodrama with dark comedy and Holm makes it work well. The material used from the novel is used beautifully. There's sympathy for him as visits his wife's grave, and as he wills to commit suicide. He's hilarious too, with his deadpan expression he's hilarious in his behaviour he utters the word idiot to passers-by, he imitates a Chihuahua plus his rivalry with people who own foreign cars is exceptionally funny. And he's emotional, thanks to timely flashbacks that carefully construct his life from the death of his mother, through growing up with his father, to the meeting of his wife, which combined with Lassgård's tour de force performance is a perfect storyteller. A Man Called Ove excels in brilliance, it's an incredibly human comedy which captures true sentiment and fires it like an arrow at your heartstrings; this could be one of the best films of the year by far. VERDICT: Flawless performances help convert this lovable tale onto the silver screen, with excellent execution in true sentiment and emotional heft.

gazferg I saw this movie subtitled in English and I was disappointed in the inadequate transfer of the book of the same name to the screen. In the English translation of the book, the story captures the cultural and emotional nuances of Ove's relationships and interactions within his neighborhood. Ove is not only portrayed as cantankerous and intolerant, he is also a warm, tolerant and generous human being who is dealing with significant grief. The book covers his many relationships within his neighborhood in much detail and it is from these that we learn the warm side of Ove. Some of these more significant relationships (e.g. Jimmy)are brushed over in the movie and therefore don't build the richness that is evident in the book. I suppose it's always a big ask to capture in film what makes such a successful book as A Man Called Ove. However, it's not impossible (e.g. Last Orders by Graham Swift). These criticisms aside, Rolf Lassgard as Ove (senior) and Filip Berg as Ove (younger) give commendable performances, Bahar Pars as Parvaneh less so. I wanted more from this movie however it wasn't to be.

maurice yacowar A Man Called Ove is a feel-good Swedish comedy that sidles up to the very serious problem of unassimilating immigrants from the Middle East — and the Swedes' increasing fear of them — then sappily slinks away, toothless. Ove's community of townhouses is a miniature of the regimented Swedish welfare state. Though deposed as board chair, Ove angrily continues to enforce the regulations. Rather than helping his neighbours, Ove refuses their requests and prefers vigilante law-enforcement. The film's central thrust is to discover the tragedy that created this bitter, selfish, righteous jerk. At the end, Ove not only abandons his own isolation but organizes the entire community to thwart the institutional attempt to take away his paralyzed old friend/enemy Rune. The flashbacks reveal Ove to have been a promising, solitary, nervous young man. He lost his mother as a boy, saw his father killed by a train while bragging about Ove's report card and stumbled into a marriage with the beautiful, smart Sonja. A bus crash aborts their child and leaves Sonja paralyzed. When she dies of cancer, Ove is encrusted with rage. If Sonja seems too good a catch for the unpromising Ove, her later career as a special needs teacher suggests she intuits potential others don't. Even Ove doesn't know his own continuing value, as his failures at suicide reveal. Hence neighbour Parvaneh's conclusion: "You're amazingly crap at dying." Parvaneh is the film's crucial center: a pregnant Persian who fled Iran, married an affable but clumsy Swede and just became Ove's neighbour. Ove initially rages against the new family's incompetence, ignorance of the community's laws and rowdiness. He's warmed into accepting them. Their interchange represents traditional Sweden's encounter with immigrants from the Middle East. But this immigrant is a heavily sentimentalized soft-focus version of the immigration that is rupturing Sweden. Parvaneh is the idealized immigrant, with her two lovable Persian children to thaw Ove's heart, her tasty Persian cooking, her eagerness to join and to enjoy her new community. Director Hannes Holm's point is that this Other, an immigrant from that very different culture, is no threat to Sweden's traditional virtues but the opportunity for their renewal. This simplification undermines film's exhortation to embrace the immigrant. Because Sweden's threat is not from anyone like Parvanah, the domesticated, safe form of the Other, but from the violent jihadists and rapists that impose their old culture's values instead of accepting those of their new land. So the film does not really treat with the issue as it is problematically occurring but plays it in a much simpler, easier form. In sentimentalizing the immigrant the film ignores the real issue it purports to address. This sentimentalizing pervades the film. As if Parvanah's two little daughters were not enough to register Ove's revived feeling, he first confronts and threatens, then eventually adopts and sleeps with yet another Persian — the stray cat. So, too, the running joke about Ove's passionate commitment to the Saab automobile brand. That traditional value he inherited from his father. Its advantage is another metaphor for stasis: its mechanism does not require the propeller rod others do. If brand preference is a minor difference, here it balloons. Ove clashes with his kindred neighbour Rune when the latter opts for the Volvo family. The men's deepening hostility reflects in their graduation to higher models in their respective brands. Then Rune does the indefensible: embracing the German. When Ove rails against the German and the French cars, the film satirizes jingoism and belligerent nationalism as lightly and as safely as it did the issue of immigration. This very engaging, pleasant and reassuring film is fine — except for occupying the space and time that would have been better invested in a serious treatment of the issue it cites but evades.