DECEMBER 22, 2019
With a title like “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and a top-billed Tom Hanks, you think you know what you’re getting into when you head inside the theater. But, I suspect that you’ll be surprised to see what the film actually is and especially what it is not.
One thing it is not is a biography of Mister Rogers. Yes, Fred Rogers is a character in the film, but “A Beautiful Day” is not about the beloved children’s host. Inspired by a 1998 profile in Esquire of Rogers written by investigative reporter Tom Junod, Tom, here called Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), is assigned to write this profile by his editor Ellen (Christine Lahti). Profiling Mister Rogers is the last thing that Lloyd wants to do — it seems that he is preoccupied by a few anger management issues that has cost him his relationship with his father Jerry (Chris Cooper) and threatens his marriage to wife Andrea (Susan Kalechi Watson of “This Is Us”).
Lloyd reluctantly travels to the Pittsburgh studios of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and finally meets Fred Rogers (Hanks) himself with the goal of aiming to expose just how different the real man is from the character he portrays. But he is continually stymied in pursuing that angle by Rogers himself. As the men talk, it becomes clear to Lloyd that Fred actually is the same kind person in real life as the man that children watch every day.
At that point, Lloyd is shocked when he slowly begins to realize that the tables have been turned on him, and now it’s Fred asking the questions of Lloyd. It seems that Fred has read a number of Lloyd’s articles and can recognize a damaged soul when he sees one, and it appears that he wants to use some of techniques of kindness that he uses on his television audience to bring some solace to this burned-out reporter. At first, Lloyd resists interacting with Mister Rogers and his puppets King Friday XIII and Daniel Striped Tiger, but eventually Lloyd realizes that resistance to Fred Rogers is futile.
Director Marielle Heller (who made last year’s wonderfully edgy “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) and screenwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster have come upon a great idea — they present “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” simply as a very special episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” with the host telling the boys and girls watching about his new friend Lloyd and how he’s hurting and needs a friend. It’s a brilliant way to introduce us to the world of the show and the world we will meet outside the show.
The domestic scenes between Lloyd and his wife and his father are okay, but they’re nothing that we haven’t seen done better in other films. The real magic comes when Hanks and Rhys just sit down and talk. Rhys is a great listener as an actor — watch his face when he realizes that this host of what dismissed as “a hokey kids’ show” is bringing him the truth, and all of Lloyd’s defenses just crumble.
It’s Hanks as Fred Rogers is the performance you’ll want to talk about afterward. It seems like such obvious casting that he could probably have phoned it in and gotten away with it, but instead Hanks digs deeper. Yes, he’s got the Rogers voice and speech patterns down perfectly, but that would be a simple impersonation if that’s all he relied on. But Hanks is not afraid to show the occasional dark side of Fred Rogers (and it is clear he has one) and just how he works through and channels those feelings. He’s utterly convincing in those scenes which allow Hanks to add an extra dimension to a man we all thought we knew.
Yes, the set is bright, and Mister Rogers’ sweaters are colorful, but make no mistake — “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is not always lollipops and roses. There are moments of melancholy and regret that at times punctures the sunshine, but only to make the reality behind the fantasy of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” feel even more true to life.
GRADE: B+
