[TIFF 2019] REVIEW: 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood', or Episode 913 of the beloved show

Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys star in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, directed by Marielle Heller.

Fred Rogers is nice and he is awesome. 

You won't find people, if any, who disagree. But that's part of the problem in Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a film based on Tom Junod's feature on Mr. Rogers, “Can You Say… Hero?”  

The marketing material would lead you to believe otherwise, but Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) is not the main character of this film. Instead, it's Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a fictionalized version of Junod who is tasked to write a profile on Mr. Rogers, at one point whose show held the record for longest-running children’s TV show with 912 episodes. Brash, impatient and brimming with anger, the film follows Lloyd's transformation from someone who punches his father at a wedding without remorse to someone who is (more or less) willing to go on vacation with the same man. 

The best way to describe the film is to call it a fable; it contains a moral lesson (that the film would have you believe can only be taught by Mr. Rogers) while mixing shots of Pittsburgh (both real and miniature) and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It's charming, but at the end of it all we know nothing more about Pittsburgh, Mr. Rogers or his show that we don't already know. (I had a similar critique of Won't You Be My Neighbor?). In this regard the film feels disappointing, because it's only after the credits roll that we realize we sat through a 107-minute episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It feels a bit like cheating because this wasn't quite what we had been promised by the film’s marketing, and it was easy to get sucked in by nostalgia and cute miniature models.  

Even when the film decides to delve more into Mr. Rogers, referencing his obsession with swimming laps every day and his short temper, it's either made in passing or totally ignored. Lloyd mentions that it must've been difficult for Mr. Rogers' kids to grow under his big shadow, to which Mr. Rogers admits is true, but it's a small conversation in a film full of dialogue. Mr. Rogers bangs the piano angrily when he's mad, but he only bangs the piano 30 seconds before the end credits. This is about as villainous as Mr. Rogers becomes, and whom Heller had described as the adversary who elicits change from Lloyd.   

This is fine, but once again Mr. Rogers seems too infallible and not nearly as peculiar as Junod had described him. If Superman can be criticized as boring for not having any weaknesses, then could we say the same about Mr. Rogers? In a cynical world rife with angry rhetoric and all kinds of inequality, we expected Heller’s Mr. Rogers to be more like us; more human than angel so that being like Mr. Rogers seems attainable. Instead, we get a nostalgic version that only imitates but never explores. We end up somehow knowing less because we never really study him. What is the lesson that can be learned from Mr. Rogers himself?

The filmmakers went through numerous efforts to cast Hanks, Hollywood's best version of the American dad, yet, there's something off about his performance. Mr. Rogers had an extraordinary amount of patience and an ability to let his subjects open up on their own time and at their own pace, but Hanks is much more domineering, daring you to not answer him at all. There's a twinkle in Hanks' eye that is more mischief than curiosity, and a sense of anger and frustration that lies just beneath. I am deeply reminded of Hanks' deceiving southern charm in The Ladykillers. 

This is a film about a lonely journalist who finds love from someone who seems to have endless amounts to give. It is meant to be warm and fuzzy, but in doing so also follows a long line of films about turning evil men good, many of which have told the story far, far better. A dramatization and a documentary later and we still can’t really pinpoint why and how Fred McFeely Rogers and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood made us feel so good.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood gets three stars out of four.