A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

 “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is an unexpected biopic in that Fred Rogers is not the main focus of the film.

Yup.

You still learn a great deal about the man known as Mr. Rogers. The film just went about a completely different way about it. Overall, it works. 

I loved the story, but I did want more Mr. Rogers. After all, he’s the reason I was watching the film in the first place. 

Director Marie Heller came up with a cute way to transport us to the different locations throughout the film. Model sets reminiscent of Mr. Rogers’ land of make believe took us from place to place and it was fun to see that. 

The film opens on Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) singing his show’s opening tune “Won’t You be my Neighbor?”

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers incredibly well. He got the voice down and does a wonderful job of capturing the man many children grew up with on screen.

In the opening show within the movie, Mr. Rogers begins by presenting a picture board to the audience. 

The pictures are of Mr. Rogers’s friends, but one isn’t like the others. One of the pictures is a mugshot  of  Mr. Rogers’s new friend Lloyd (Matthew Rhys). 

Lloyd is based on journalist Tom Junod who interviewed Mr. Rogers for a feature in Esquire magazine. Lloyd happens to be the main focus of the film. 

Lloyd takes his journalistic job seriously and refuses to do anything that isn’t hard hitting. 

Unfortunately, for the magazine’s upcoming Heroes edition only one man agreed to be interviewed by Lloyd. That man is of course, Mr. Rogers. 

Lloyd isn’t a nice man. He’s so different from his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) that it’s a wonder how they’re still together. 

The antagonist comes in the form of Lloyd’s father (Chris Cooper). Lloyd has hated his father ever since he abandoned the family after Lloyd’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. 

Now the tie in with Mr. Rogers. 

As Lloyd begins interviewing Mr. Rogers, he finds that Mr. Rogers asks him just as many questions in return. Little by little in the only ways Mr. Rogers can, Lloyd’s begins to confront all his issues. 

Lloyd tries desperately to uncover the real Mr. Rogers and not the persona seen in TV, but it appears, that they were in fact one in the same. The man people saw on their TV screens was the same man they met on the street. 

Hanks portrays this beautifully. If there was one word Mr. Rogers hated to be called it was a saint. He admittedly had a short temper, but he worked daily on controlling it. 

Focusing on Lloyd allows us to see Mr. Rogers as he existed in the world. The downside is that, we don’t get Mr. Rogers’s full story. How he came to be on television and why he stopped and why he decided to ultimately come back. 

My admiration continues to grow for this man, but if you truly want to learn more about the man on your TV screens the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is the way to do it.