Direction: Marielle Heller
Country: USA
A flattering, good-natured crowd-pleaser, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood has the heart in the right place, but doesn’t avoid some trivial sentimentality along the way. The film reconstructs the episodes involving real-life journalist Tom Junod and the popular children’s television presenter Fred Rogers. The former, portrayed by Matthew Rhys, sees his name changed to Lloyd Vogel in the film, while the versatile Tom Hanks fits perfectly in the role of Rogers, emulating his one-of-a-kind demeanor, in particular when shooting for the preschool program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a television landmark from the 60’s. The film was inspired on Junod’s article “Can You Say… Hero?”, published in Esquire in 1998. Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster co-wrote the script to be handled by director Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Can You Ever Forgive Me?).
Lloyd got hurt in the feelings and lives an angry life. His estranged father, Jerry (Chris Cooper), became the reason of his frustration since he left home when he was just a kid and his mother was dying of cancer. While keeping rejecting Jerry’s attempts to reconnect, Lloyd earns a reputation as a bitter, contemptuous writer. To his surprise, he is assigned a challenging profile of Mr. Rogers, a shockingly affable human being who overwhelms him every time he talks about anger management, emotional control, forgiveness, toleration, and how to generally deal with feelings. It’s excused to say that the interviewer becomes the interviewee, with Mr. Rogers dodging the questions to focus on the sensitive aspects that most unnerve the journalist.
Heller brings intense close-ups into her attentive filmmaking methods, delivering a heart-rendering tribute to a man of generosity that, although singular, struggles with a somewhat overempathetic posture varnished with a beatific gloss. Sometimes flowing like a dream, the film is perhaps too ambitious in its aims, sermonizing more than harmonizing. It’s worth seeing for the positive messages and Hanks' notable performance.
