A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Review
Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer (Emmy winner Matthew Rhys) is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about empathy, kindness, and decency from America's most beloved neighbor.
PG: Some strong thematic material, a brief fight, and some mild language
Studios: Sony, TriStar Pictures, Tencent Pictures, Big Beach
Runtime: 1 Hr and 49 Minutes
Director: Marielle Heller | Screenwriters: Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Harpster
Cast: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper
Release Date: November 22, 2019
Last year, director Marielle Heller crafted the Melissa McCarthy-led Lee Israel biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me?, one of 2018’s best movies. Another one of 2018’s best movies was the Fred Rogers documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor? Both movies were — how do I say this lightly? — friggin’ robbed at the Oscars this year. Heller was snubbed for Best Director and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? didn’t even receive a Best Documentary nomination. Now, Heller is back with a vengeance — as she should be — with anotha one. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has Heller pulling up in a toy train trolley telling you to get in ‘cause we’re going on a psychedelic odyssey with Mister Rogers. Shoot, the director of my #11 movie of the year helmed a narrative centered on the figure whose doc made my #3 spot for the year. Also, he’s played by Tom Hanks, America’s most wholesome actor. You know that’s a recipe for perfection, and a recipe for my emotions to go:
Now, if there’s one thing you need to know prior to viewing this it’s that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is NOT a biopic. I repeat, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is NOT a biopic. If you want to watch a movie centered on Fred Rogers and his impact, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is already accessible to you. The best way to describe this family drama is to compare it to an expedition — more so a bizarre, hypnotic odyssey, told through the format of an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
The film opens with a recreation of the show’s introduction as Mr. Rogers (Hanks) sings the theme beat for beat, action for action, even doing the changing of the shoe. As he addresses the audience in the vein of the original show, he introduces them to journalist Lloyd Vogel, a jaded, short-tempered writer at Esquire who writes scathing profiles of his subjects. Therefore, he has quite an unpopular reputation amongst his peers and the magazine’s audience. The reason he is as cynical as he is lies within his troubled relationship with his alcoholic father, whom he resents. After getting into a quarrel with him at his sister's wedding (and getting decked in the face), Lloyd finds himself at his wit’s end. That is until he is assigned to write a profile on Fred Rogers, the only person in the world who was willing to talk to him. From their first in person encounter, a slow and budding friendship forms as Rogers guides him through this heartbreaking, yet emotionally resonant, journey focusing on the themes of kindness and forgiveness.
Marielle Heller has been noticeably raising the bar for herself with her storytelling. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is her most ambitious and powerful project to date, proving she's one of today’s incredible filmmakers who challenges the formality of conventional storytelling while gripping your emotions.
Aforementioned, the film is told in the vein of an episode of the program, but Heller adds distinct elements to consistently keep it set in Mr. Rogers’s world despite it being a mature story. As Heller triggers your nostalgia through intricately detailed sequences told through her unique perspective, she adds an atmosphere of weirdness in order to reconstruct the familiar narrative of a straightforward drama and convey one in a refreshing way. For example, a ton of the establishing shots used for location transitions are done through the arts and crafts and toy sets from Rogers’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Another means of transition is implementing the segments from the series to lay down the groundwork for Lloyd, moving the story along at a relatively fluent pace. For good measure, it retains the 480p SDTV picture format of the show during those moments while the rest of the story is told in widescreen.
As the narrative is focused on Lloyd and his journey of forgiveness regarding his resentment towards his dad while trying to learn how to be a decent father to his newborn son, the primary issue lies in how Lloyd is written as a character. His anger often escalates for logical reasons, but throughout this journey and the blooming friendship he shares with Rogers, not much of a character progression occurs in his arc. He’s just one-note, cynical, and angry all the time. When situations get dire, he acts even worse than usual. While there are understandable moments of shock that are perfectly timed, his anger becomes too frequent. It felt as if the screenwriters wrote him as the total antithesis of Mr. Rogers and left him at that. Despite the problems he has regarding his relationship with his father, there is no excuse for him to be so vile to the world. You sympathize with Lloyd and his daddy issues at first, but the more frequent his anger becomes and how often he escalates to becoming a complete prick with no progression prevents you from being thoroughly engaged with his character. Rhys is great and delivers a harrowing depiction of pain and regret, especially during the most subtle sequences of intimacy, but it’s mostly the lack of progression that’s off-putting. He’s 100% a curmudgeon all the way through.
That said, the moments shared between Matthew Rhys’s Lloyd and Hanks’s Mr. Rogers are the areas where this film shines the most. The chemistry they share on screen is the captivating core of the movie where you have a negative cynical person with an emotional detachment from the world interacting with one of the most influential figures in history best known for approaching the world with his positive emotions. The conversations they share are intimate and entertaining, leading to some of the most profoundly effective and unforgettable scenes in cinema this year. Even the way they exchange dialogue and how Rogers thoughtfully aims to break down the barriers of a hardboiled person with genuine kindness and love rings true to what Rogers was all about. Watching Hanks masterfully whisk himself away in this role to capture the cadence of Fred Rogers, even down to the pauses and ticks in his speech pattern, is phenomenal. It’s a shoo-in for him snatching a Best Supporting Actor nom for sure. Heller brilliantly helms the camera, using the right amount of close-up shots of Rogers taking short breaths to think about the correct response to anyone he interacts with, knowing what areas to avoid as to not trigger anyone’s personal boundaries. It’s a distinctly human aspect of the figure that is perfectly captured through Hanks’s portrayal. Even if you’re unable to separate the recognizable Hanks from the recognizable figure, you forget about Hanks once you watch him converse with Rhys and how he delivers the same human intimacy the real figured shared.
He also gets his physical movements on point, such as the gaping smile and gesturing of his hands when he’s delighted. He even nails the voice of Daniel Tiger and King Friday the 13th. Hanks! Did! His! Homework! And he NAAAAAILS IT! All that’s left for him to do is play God. Granted, that role has been taken by Morgan Freeman, but Hanks can literally play God. He already nailed Walt Disney and transcends as Mr. Rogers. I swear, Heller secluded herself to binge watch every episode of Mister Rogers, and she probably watched them alongside Hanks. OR, Heller’s husband, Jorma Taccone, forced them both to binge the program Clockwork-style.
Through the exceptional supporting performance by Tom Hanks and the powerfully stylistic direction by Marielle Heller, who proves to be one the most dignified filmmakers of today, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood tugs at your heartstrings through an ambitiously experimental journey that captures the spirit of the figure while telling an emotional story in a fresh light.
