A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood practically releases itself before the story was even written. Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rodgers is a match made in movie heaven. And what better weekend to release the film then Thanksgiving, a holiday built for things Mr. Rodgers cares about! Throw in some clever direction from Marielle Heller, and you’ve got yourself a pleasant way to spend some time with family around the holidays.
The main arc of the story, ironically does not revolve around Mr. Rodgers (Hanks). The story is about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a well respected but vicious journalist. Vogel’s cynicism and jaded beliefs because of a bad upbringing by his dad Jerry (Chris Cooper) leads him to dig deep to find something wrong with every one of his subjects he writes about. Vogel gets assigned Rodgers in an assignment, and becomes determined to find something wrong with a guy who he deems to good to be true. But like everyone else, Vogel falls under the spell and charms of one of the greatest humans to ever walk the Earth.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’s story isn’t the slam dunk you think it should be. Credit to Heller and the writers for thinking of a great way to use Mr. Rodgers in a movie. Movies usually have characters who go through an arc and transform from beginning to end. Smartly realizing no one wants to watch Mr. Rodgers in deep moral dilemma, Heller centers the story around a jaded, hurt person who has to learn that he can love and be capable of loving. And how does Heller tell the story? By turning the movie into just a long episode of Mr. Rodgers’s Neighborhood, creating mini sets of Pittsburgh and New York city for transitions, and using the same piano musical cues to help get us from place to place. Some of the funniest material is when Lloyd imagines himself as a character on Mr. Rodgers’s show, confused and pulled into the whims of this loving, wonderful man.
The power of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is watching this broken man become whole again because of his interactions with Hanks’s Mr. Rodgers. Hanks perfectly channels what made Fred Rodgers so special: at not point do you feel that he’s not 100% empathetic, but he’s also secretly really smart at generating silence, making Matthew Rhys’s character fill the space with his issues so Mr. Rodgers can learn who he’s being interviewed by and help the person if possible. Hanks is so good here that when he’s not onscreen the movie loses some of its momentum because Vogel’s story isn’t strong enough to carry the movie alone. Heller knows this too, so thankfully he’s not offscreen all that much.
Mr. Rodgers was a human version of a hug. Tom Hanks is America’s dad. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood merges America’s dad and a hug into one person just in time for Thanksgiving. If you’re having a rough go of it this year, just let Tom Hanks and kindness wash over you and feel warmed enough to face the world again after watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. And if you need more Fred Rodgers, watch this documentary and be reduced to a puddle of tears…