MOVIE REVIEW: A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (2019)

If you think this movie is going to be a biopic about the life of Fred Rogers, you are dead wrong. If you are looking for a family-friendly, aw-shucks kind of uplifting movie involving Mr. Rogers, this is not it. It is remarkable how much this movie has been reduced to being known as the Mr. Rogers movie when it is both more and less than that.

Magazine journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is assigned to write a 400-word article about the squeaky-clean Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) for a heroes edition of Esquire. Vogel is cynical of the assignment and uses it as an opportunity to try to break down Rogers’s public image and expose him in some way. Despite his best attempts to tarnish the man’s reputation, Rogers becomes an outlet for Vogel to work through his own feelings and his complicated relationship with his father.

Fred Rogers was the real deal. Any movie about his life and rise to prominence as a children’s TV personality risks falling into the realm of a low-stakes puff piece. This film, however, exists at the opposite end of the spectrum of possibilities. Using Rogers as a supporting character is the key, because we don’t really need to know his story. That’s not going to change how we feel about him. By showcasing the conversion of a broken and cynical man into a Fred Rogers believer, it reinforces the power of Rogers’s soft-spoken wisdom. Having to sit through metamorphosis makes for a very awkward and, at times, very uncomfortable experience.

Rhys does a fine job of portraying a man who is a mess. Chris Cooper, who has a knack for playing unlikable characters, garners both disgust and pity from the audience as Vogel’s deadbeat father. You feel the tension between the two. But in many ways, the viewing experience feels more like watching someone else’s therapy sessions. If you don’t know that going in, there’s a chance that you will feel like you didn’t sign up for the bulk of the plot.

Hanks’s portrayal of Rogers is supposed to anchor the film. Without Rogers, there is no film, so the part is critical to get right. Hanks does well conveying Rogers’s quiet demeanor and gentle guidance with evaluating and coming to terms with one’s feelings. The hang-up for me is that Hanks falls into a sort of uncanny valley in his portrayal of Rogers. Yes, the cadence and gentleness are right, but Hanks looks and sounds just a little too off for me to really believe he is Fred Rogers for an hour and forty minutes.

Despite its jarring nature as not the biopic you may have expected, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood does a good job of telling the story it does set out to tell. Hanks aside, the acting works and the progression of Vogel feels believable. In the end, Hanks as Rogers helps the audience digest the emotions and tumult surrounding Vogel, which satisfies in a way that a straight-up Rogers biopic wouldn’t have. It’s not the most pleasant film to sit through, so I won’t go so far as to recommend it, but it is a film that gets the job done and will give you a little something to talk about afterward.

FINAL RATING: 3.5 out of 5