A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

  • 07 Dec - 13 Dec, 2019
  • Mag The Weekly
  • Reviews


In last year’s lucrative yet scattershot documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbour?, the world of the much-loved children’s TV staple Mister Rogers was gently cracked open for an audience who might be familiar with his on-screen persona but less aware of his personal life. There were no major insights but even the smallest detail proved illuminating, rounding out and reaffirming the image of a rare public figure defined by genuine, untarnished goodness.

Anyone hoping for dirt in Marielle Heller’s semi-true semi-biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood will leave unfulfilled, rather like the film’s actual protagonist, the cynical, mostly fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys). Loosely based on the writer Tom Junod, who was sent to interview Fred Rogers for Esquire in the late 90s, Vogel sees the assignment as a step down, a puff piece handed to someone who should be dealing with the harder stuff. He arrives at the Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood studio with a chip on his shoulder and, after meeting the man himself (Tom Hanks), remains unconvinced yet intrigued. He can’t quite believe that Rogers’ amiable and selfless on-screen persona is real, partly because of his usual investigative mode and partly because he was abandoned by his father (a pitch perfect Chris Cooper) at an impressionable age.

Technically, this isn’t really a biopic at all since Rogers isn’t the true protagonist and the film only focuses on a brief, half-fabricated period of time, leaving much of his life unexplored. It’s more of a father-son story featuring an unlikely added element, a man who can’t resist inserting himself into the lives of others – especially those in need of help.

Casting Hanks as Rogers seemed almost too fitting conceptually – one beloved, fundamentally “good” American father figure playing another – but their charms are vastly different. Rogers had a calming stillness to him while Hanks has a more lively, boyish effervescence. It’s a given that Hanks will nab at least a best supporting actor nomination.

It’s not a film without fault, with one over-egged dream sequence falling flat and some last-act emotion not hitting quite as hard as it should, but its warmth radiates throughout. Many people will surely herald this as the film we “need” right now but that’s a meaningless statement and what’s important about the lessons of acceptance and forgiveness that Rogers preaches is that they’re lessons we need at any time and likely always will.

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