A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Wow!

Having watched and loved last year’s documentary on Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbour, I wondered whether A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood wouldn’t just be a dramatized version of what I already knew. I needn’t have worried. Indeed, not only is there very little overlap between the films, Rogers isn’t even the protagonist in this new one (despite the presence of Tom Hanks in the lead role).

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood focuses instead on the character of Lloyd Vogel (played very well by Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist assigned to write a short article on Rogers in 1998 as part of an American heroes edition. Lloyd is unpopular among those he interviews, known for putting a negative or critical spin on whatever he hears. But Rogers treats him like an old friend and disarms him by constantly asking questions about Lloyd’s own life. 

This is particularly distracting for Lloyd because he is going through a somewhat traumatic time in his life, dealing with a newborn son and the recent wedding of his sister, Lorraine (Tammy Blanchard). Lloyd’s father, Jerry (Chris Cooper), attended that wedding, opening up old wounds that hurt enough for Lloyd to take a swing at his father and start a fight. 

Lloyd’s wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), tries to be supportive but is frustrated by Lloyd’s hatred for his father and unwillingness to even talk to him. Lloyd, meanwhile, is digging into Rogers’s past life, with the hope of exposing some flaws or secrets, only to find himself sharing private pieces of his own life with Rogers. This, in turn, leads Rogers to do what he does best: reaching out to the child within all of us. 

I confess to being a little disappointed that Rogers wasn’t the centre of this film, especially since I didn’t find the Vogel family story as compelling as I would like (despite an excellent performance by Cooper). On the other hand, I’m convinced this is precisely what Rogers himself would have wanted to see in a film about him. In that sense, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood felt exactly right. And the relationship between Lloyd and Rogers was beautifully handled, with one brilliant scene after another (including my favourite scene of the year so far).

Hanks, who is one of the best, was the perfect choice to play Rogers, making us believe it’s really him despite them not looking that much alike (at least, not to me). The direction by Marielle Heller was also just right, while the writing, score and cinematography, if not exceptional, were more than adequate. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a wonderful humanizing film that I recommend to all. It gets **** and a place in my top ten films of the year. My mug is up.