Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, directed by Marielle Heller, tells the tale of a journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a disgruntled man who lives with his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) and baby son, raising him while harboring a deep grudge against his father (Chris Cooper). But when his job assigns him to do a piece on TV personality Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), Vogel takes this opportunity to write a juicy exposé. The two instead bond over Vogel’s trauma and the latter must overcome his bitterness towards his father and learn the values of forgiveness.

I was honestly a little skeptical of going into this film. We just had a great documentary about Mr. Rogers just last year in the form of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and this film just seemed like it’s made for people who don’t want to watch the documentary just for the fact that it’s a documentary. Turns out the film is not exactly about Fred Rogers and more about the journalist Tom Junod who wrote the article this film’s based on. A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is about as cliched as just about any biopic you can think of, but you really can’t help but appreciate the positivity that this film gives out overall.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is how much they tried to recreate an episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. The film opens with a shot for shot recreation of the show’s opening sequence with Tom Hanks doing a near perfect impersonation of Mr. Rogers and presents the story as if it’s the main subject of an episode. It even goes so far as making every B-roll transition a cute toy model recreation of the film’s locations, staying true to the spirit of the show.

Tom Hanks gives a pretty acceptable performance as Fred Rogers; there wasn’t much room for Hanks to flex his acting since the film isn’t really about him and Rogers himself was pretty calm and mild mannered in real life, but Hanks nonetheless manages to get a lot of Roger’s mannerisms down pretty well. Matthew Rhys also gives a good performance and so does the rest of the cast in general. The message of the film stays true to what the show usually teaches kids and the technical aspect from the cinematography to the editing was overall serviceable.

Overall this was a relatively safe film to check out. It gets really corny from time to time and there were a lot of moments where the film tries to force an emotion out of you, but there wasn’t much to consider this a bad film. It’s a very likable film that I can definitely see a lot of people enjoying. For those that want a whole film exploring Mr. Rogers as the main focus rather than a story telling tool, I would highly recommend the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? that goes deeper into Fred Roger’s psyche than this film does. However if this sounds like a film you would like then go check this film out and see for yourself.

Final Verdict: 6/10