“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Review by Daniel Hoeppner : Pop Culture Leftovers

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Review by Daniel Hoeppner

December 31, 2019 3:34 pm |

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a movie that is coming off the heels of a widely
popular and cathartic documentary called Won't You Be My Neighbor from 2018, and with that
it has some high expectations. The documentary was a near religious experience for many due to
it reassuring us in a time where we are finding out that many "beloved" people we have watched in
our lives turned out to have terrible skeletons in our closet, that our favorite children's learning
personality was, in fact, everything we saw on our tv's. There wasn't some horrible cover-up, or that
Fred Rogers wasn't the kind and gentle soul we perceived him to be. It reaffirmed that he was just
as generous in real life as he was on the screen.

Because of this, and adding the seemingly nail on the head casting of Tom Hanks (America's second
favorite media personality), many, including myself, were concerned that this movie wouldn't live up
to our hopes and expectations. But luckily, director Marielle Heller was ahead of us on that. She
was able to bring her tremendous talent that she showed in Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever
Forgive Me to this movie and create something that isn't a straight up biopic, but instead uses the
legendary TV host as a sort of omniscient narrative character rather than the lead role.

Instead, we have Matthew Rhys as the lead, playing a cynical journalist and first time father, Lloyd
Vogel. While irritated by the initial assignment of interviewing the famed TV host as part of a fluff
piece for Esquire, he becomes obsessed with it as he spends time with Fred Rogers, looking for some
sort of hidden truth behind it all. Rhys plays it very well, as his frustration grows with Fred Rogers'
dodging some of his questions and instead turning it back towards himself. It leads to some very
interesting introspection for Vogel regarding his own childhood trauma with his father, played by
Chris Cooper. The way that Rhys seems to bounce off the seemingly unshakeable TV icon makes him
continue to dig deeper, which seems exactly what Rogers wants.

While their interplay is very much the heart of the film, it is really the dynamic between Lloyd and
his wife Andrea, played very nuanced by Susan Kelechi Watson, that is the crux of the movie. Lloyd's
drive for his work, along with his unresolved personal demons, are very down to earth, and remind the
audience of how important it is to deal with your past, even when you don't want to or don't think you
need to. And showing how vital a nurturing figure like Mr. Rogers can be to a child's development,
while juxtaposed by the growing tension between Lloyd and Andrea, does a remarkable balancing act
of letting you see the good and bad without focusing on either too heavily to make the message seem
ham fisted.

Combine all of this with the nostalgic love we have for Mr. Rogers, along with lovely little
things like having establishing shots being model work that you might see in the show, and it creates
an atmosphere that, like Mr. Rogers himself would do, lets you know that despite the issues the
characters on screen are having, and we ourselves face every day, it is okay to have problems. The
movie tells us that ultimately, we can believe in ourselves and others, and if you just try at it,
things will usually work out.

And that is something that everyone needs to be reminded of, regardless of age. That it is okay
to be upset or feeling down; it's how we choose to deal with those feelings that is all the difference.\

PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅