A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Review

It's the week of me catching up on some November films that I missed. On Monday I posted my belated review of "Ford v. Ferrari," a movie I ultimately enjoyed even though it was a bit long and dragged on during the first two-thirds of the movie. And now we dive into the second movie in as many years about Mr. Rogers, a man whose show I grew up watching. And I'm certainly not the only one. I'd argue that most Americans who had a proper childhood also grew up on Mr. Rogers. And that's what made last year's documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" such a popular and powerful film. Everyone knows and loves Mr. Rogers and it was so inspirational seeing a deep dive into his life to discover how genuine and near-perfect he really was. The Mr. Rogers you see on screen in each episode is the real him as opposed to it being an act in front of a camera, which is why he was able to make such a big impact on millions of kids throughout the country and over the course of several decades. And I'm still upset that this documentary didn't get nominated for best documentary feature when it clearly deserved to win that award hands down. And now not far removed for that movie's success, we get another journey into Mr. Rogers. This time with Tom Hanks.

I'll say right off the bat that this review might come off as a tad bit controversial. As much as I love Mr. Rogers, the idea of Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers in a movie that I thought was a biopic is something that my brain was never able to fully connect with. On the one hand, Tom Hanks is one of the nicest and classiest actors working. And he's also one of the most talented. If there's one person on Earth that could perfectly personify Mr. Rogers in terms of personality and class, Tom Hanks is the one. But when it comes to acting, in order to be able to properly pull of a portrayal off a real-life character, being able to nail down the personality and mannerism is only part of the battle. You have to look and sound like the character, at least to some extent. Granted, if you're playing a fairly unknown person, maybe you could get away with not looking like said person. But when you're portraying one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century that nearly every human being on Earth at the moment is well aware of, I think being able to look like and sound like that person is important. As great as Tom Hanks is, he just doesn't look or sound anything like Mr. Rogers. Nor does he have the ability to completely disappear into a role. He'll always look and sound like Tom Hanks.

Given that I'm a bit of a film nerd and thus have a good pulse on the film industry, I've known about this movie for a long time. The second they announced this, I immediately became skeptic. The idea of Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers was a confusing one to me. That said, I was willing to wait and see how this turns out given that Marielle Heller was the director here. If you don't know her name, she directed "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" last year, which was an excellent little film that was painfully overlooked. If you want to feel like a prestigious film nerd for a day, go watch that movie and brag to your friends how awesome it is because I can almost guarantee you that most of them will have never even heard of it. Anyways, knowing that she is quite capable of directly a well-crafted biopic, I was willing to give this movie a shot. But then the trailers were released and my brain got confused even more. The movie looked like it could be good, but it looked like Tom Hanks cosplaying as Mr. Rogers. But still, you can't judge a movie by its trailer, right? Which is why I was willing to go in open-minded. It got rave reviews out of the festival circuits, which was followed by excellent critical reviews. Currently it's at 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Was I about to be proven wrong?

Nope. I'm going the be the Negative Nancy here. Now to this movie's credit, this is actually a well-crafted film. It's very easy to take on a biopic and present something that's generic and bland. There's a biopic road map that many biopics feel they have to follow, which can get a bit tiresome, especially when a biopic feels like it's just going through the motions with the sole purpose of attracting the awards season crowd. The other problem biopics can have is when their subject matter has a life or story that doesn't fit a traditional movie narrative, so the filmmakers change history in order to craft a narrative that better fits the traditional movie structure. This one is a really big pet peeve of mine. Some people will argue that as long as it's a good movie that entertained them, they don't care about accuracy. They came to watch a movie and be entertained rather than be given a history listen. And while I understand that point of view, that's not how my brain works. I have many different hats that I have the ability to put on when it comes to film. When I am walking into a historical film, I'm not there to be entertained. I'm there to be educated. And when my history lesson is inaccurate, I get rather peeved. If the person's life didn't fit the narrative, find someone who does. 

In contrast to both of those points, "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" doesn't even feel like a biopic. In fact, it's not even really about Mr. Rogers. It's a movie about a journalist named Lloyd Vogel, who is a disgruntled journalist with a miserable personal life. He's received a bad rap due to his stories that always seem to shine his interviewees in a bad light. In his personal defense, he's not out to praise all his subjects and be their best friend. He's there to present the honest truth and he often sees himself as more of an investigative journalist who is out to paint a real picture that the general population may not know. And while that may be a worthy cause, it has resulted in people having no desire to be interviewed by him because it may ruin their reputation. On top of all this, Lloyd has an awful relationship with his father who is currently trying to insert himself into Lloyd's life after years of neglect and poor treatment that left an awful taste in Lloyd's mouth, especially given certain things that he did to his wife, Lloyd's mother, that I suppose I won't spoil here. In the midst of all this, Lloyd's boss assigns him to do a quick feature on Mr. Rogers, which Lloyd really has no desire to do, but isn't given much of a choice, so he grudgingly accepts.

This aspect of the story I thought was wonderful. And it was a very unique way of portraying Mr. Rogers given that Mr. Rogers ended up as a supporting character in the movie rather than the movie's main focus. Instead of following a traditional biopic path, the movie chose to show the power and influence of Mr. Rogers through an isolated story of one individual he met rather than giving us a highlight reel of his life. In doing so, the movie was able to focus on a few strong themes in this story that leaves a very positive message. Lloyd's character arc is quite fantastic as he tries to deal with his work, his father, his wife, and his son, trying to balance all of these aspects of his life that aren't all working out super well. And the movie doesn't provide any easy outs with all of this as there's some raw, human emotion present between Lloyd and his father, which is elevated by two excellent performances from Matthew Rhys as Lloyd and Chris Cooper as Jerry Vogel, the father. Chris Cooper does a great job of portraying a bad man who has made a lot of serious mistakes, yet is trying to put his life back together and gain the love and support of his son. Yet Matthew Rhys is very human in his performance as he has no desire to forgive his father. And he is quite justified in this reaction.

And that's what makes this story have a genuine impact. It's easy to go through this by-the-numbers story about forgiveness. They could've easy gone through the cheesy kids route by making Lloyd automatically forgive his father without any drama, but instead they decided to present a realistic scenario, one that could be easily related to and learned from. And obviously Mr. Rogers is the one that guides Lloyd into actually making an attempt to listen to his father and fix this relationship, but it's also not an easy journey. At several points in the movie, Lloyd gets angry and frustrated with Mr. Rogers and storms out of the interview, requiring patience on Mr. Rogers' end in order to actually help Lloyd out. And this presents yet another fascinating angle in how to help someone who is going through a hard time. You can't just tell them what they're supposed to do and expect them to magically follow through with your counsel because they might not have any desire to do so. You need to be patient with them and not give up. Had Mr. Rogers had any level of impatience with Lloyd after how Lloyd reacts to what he says, Lloyd may have never learned the lesson that he needed to learn. All of this leads to a wonderful film with a lot of depth and emotion packed in.

Yet that is why I found this experience so frustrating. As amazing as this movie was with the lessons it teaches and the performances that are given, this excellent writing and strong direction still wasn't able to overcome my initial concern that entered my mind over a year ago when this movie was first announced. Tom Hanks looks and sounds absolutely nothing like Mr. Rogers. At no point during the movie was I ever able to overcome this. I honestly tried to get lost into the experience, but I just wasn't able to trick my brain into thinking the man on the screen was Mr. Rogers. The image and voice of the real Mr. Rogers is so ingrained into my soul to the point where it's a part of who I am. Much of my life growing up was influenced by the lessons he taught me every morning. So when I see a man on screen who is pretending to be Mr. Rogers, yet doesn't sound or look like him at all, my brain spends the whole time screaming at me that this is not how things should be. Thus I have to conclude that this was just a poor casting choice. Instead of finding a lesser known actor who could successfully disappear into the role and trick my brain into thinking he is Mr. Rogers, they instead went the route of casting the famous actor in order to sell tickets.

Because of all this, I don't know what to do with this movie. In terms of casting choice, the best comparison here that I can come up with is Emma Watson as Belle in "Beauty in the Beast." No, Belle is not a real life character, but she's a character who was a big part of my childhood as "Beauty and the Beast" is my favorite Disney animated movie. Disney could've chosen to cast someone who looked and sounded more like Belle, but instead they chose to go for the bigger name in Emma Watson in order to sell more tickets. And as hard as Emma Watson tried to be Belle, she's just not Belle and I ended up spending the whole movie seeing Emma Watson dressed up as Belle instead of seeing Belle. And I enjoyed that movie overall, but that was one element that I think could've been improved upon. And that's the same here. This movie did such a great job with almost everything else in the movie that a perfect casting choice with Mr. Rogers could've been the home run hit, making this one of the best movies of the year. But when they can't get the most important thing right, I end up spending the whole movie in a flustered state of confusion. I wanted to love this movie. I left inspired to be a better person. I just couldn't get over the fact that it wasn't my Mr. Rogers on screen.

Could I forgive this one big flaw and praise this movie to the high heavens? Sure, in theory I could. But I feel justified in being nitpicky because I have seen biopics, or movies about historical figures, where they get everything right. I think the gold standard here is Spielberg's "Lincoln." Not only is the movie itself fantastic, but Daniel Day Lewis did such a great job of both looking like and acting like Abraham Lincoln that I was convinced that a time machine was used to get the real Lincoln to come be in a movie about his own life. Thus when I see movies that don't get it perfectly right, I can feel justified because there are movies out there that do it right. On the one hand, we get movies like "Jackie" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" where the lead performance is absolutely perfect in every way, yet the movie around them leaves much to be desired for. And on the other hand, we have movies like this where the movie itself is fantastic, but the lead actor just does not trick my brain into thinking he's the actual person. It is possible to do both and in this instance, this just does not fully compute. The only sense of relief I got was when they showed clips of the REAL Mr. Rogers in the end credits. THAT was my Mr. Rogers. Not Tom Hanks. Thus I don't feel like giving this more than a 7/10.