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Movie Review: 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'

Lacey Terrell / Sony Pictures Entertainment

No offense to anyone, but you’d have to be pretty cynical to approach Mr. Rogers assuming he was something different from what he appeared to be. Journalist Tom Junod was that cynical when he was assigned to profile Rogers, figuring “Mr. Rogers” was a character that the separate man Fred Rogers played on TV. But through what Junod describes as Rogers’ “relentless kindness,” Junod’s defenses fell and his entire life was changed.

Junod is fictionalized as a man named Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and tells the story of Vogel writing that magazine profile and his resultant personal journey. Director Marielle Heller understands exactly the pacing needed to tell a story about Mr. Rogers’ relentless kindness, as she slowly wears down any reservations we may have. The movie is quite a bit riskier than you might expect from a biopic about Mr. Rogers, telling Lloyd’s story as if it were actually an episode of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and including some remarkable moments, one of which asks us explicitly to reflect on ourselves and is, I think, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Tom Hanks is not Mr. Rogers. But by the end of the movie, he’s also kind of not NOT Mr. Rogers. The smart move in casting Hanks isn’t that he’s a great mimic of Fred Rogers, but that he inherently carries all of the goodwill nearly all of us have toward him, and so we’re predisposed to feel his warmth and acceptance. It is a bit unsettling at the outset to see Hanks acting as Rogers, but, like everything else about the movie, he, too, wears down our cynicism, and without knowing it, we’ve been swept away.

I’ve been asked if people need to see this film if they’ve already seen the wonderful documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? And I’d say the two act as companion pieces rather than repeating themselves. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is about Mr. Rogers, yes, but it’s Lloyd Vogel’s story, and maybe our story too, and it has a lot to say that we probably all need to hear.

Fletcher Powell has worked at KMUW since 2009 as a producer, reporter, and host. He's been the host of All Things Considered since 2012 and KMUW's movie critic since 2016. Fletcher is a member of the Critics Choice Association.