A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood

Most of us have grown up on American TV, films and music but every now and then you come across something that never really made the leap over the Atlantic. The Madea series of movies for example in recent times or Hootie and the Blowfish, The Jeffersons, The Dave Matthews band, Mister Rogers and so on. The last one was the host of a TV show called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, an educational show for kids that ran on American TV for years. It was wildly popular, a charming and innocent 30 mins beloved by millions. Mister Rogers, first name Fred, passed away in 2003 and his death was mourned all across America. 2020 sees the release of A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood and us folk across the pond get to see why so many were enchanted by this gentle man.

1998. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is hurting. He's an investigative reporter for Esquire magazine and he's been asked to write a puff piece on Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) for an issue about American heroes. He's baffled by the choice, being more used to writing coruscating & in-depth articles on unwilling subjects. He's also struggling with life and this job couldn't be coming at a worse time. His wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) has just given birth to a son and to complicate things further, his estranged father (Chris Cooper) is back on the scene and he has an agenda. Interviewing Mister Rogers is the last thing he wants to do, until he meets Mister Rogers......

You may struggle with the first 5-10 minutes of this, a pitch perfect recreation of Mister Roger's Neighbourhood with all the sincere cheesiness you'd expect. It feels weird, mawkish and cloying but slowly and then surely two fantastic performances from Matthew Rhys and Tom Hanks suck you into the narrative and 110 minutes later you'll be sitting in the cinema lamenting on the fact that Mister Rogers was never part of your childhood viewing. It's a film that cynical viewers (who'll definitely identify with Lloyd) will scoff at but for every one else it's a charming paean to the simple wonder of kindness and conversation. A lot of our issues can be solved with kindness and conversation tbh. If only we had the patience to give it a go.

Lloyd lacks this patience, in every facet of his life. A wedding confrontation leaves him bruised and battered and these bruises intrigue Mister Rogers. In Lloyd he sees a man needing to be saved and so he sets out to do so, in his own gentle unassuming way and we get to see how he was so successful at what he did. Hanks sells it brilliantly, the modern day Jimmy Stewart, the nicest man in Hollywood becoming the nicest man on TV. And yet, underneath the niceties we get a glimpse or two of the flint beneath, the pounding of piano keys, a stony look, and it's here that Hanks turns Rogers from a caricature into a fully realised human being. It's not flashy work but it's a great reminder of why Hanks has been so omnipresent for the last 30 years.

Rhys does equally excellent work, those sad eyes that worked so well in his TV show The Americans, doing all the talking. Broken by events in his youth and traumatised by the reappearance of his Da (the always deadly Chris Cooper), Lloyd needs a lifeline and little does he realise how important his latest job is. Rhys' best work here happens in two moments of silence, one with his father and one with his new surrogate father Fred. We all need a little more silence in our lives, it does wonders. Lloyd's relationship with his wife Andrea is full of a different kind of silence, one where words are spoken but there's little behind them. Susan Kelechi Watson's does well as a woman struggling to hold on, torn between a new baby and a husk of a husband. She's very much a supporting role but she adds a lot here, in a part many will resonate with.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood is well worth watching even if, like me, you've no real knowledge of Mister Rogers. When it's over the first thing you'll do is run home to youtube and lose yourself in a world of re-runs. And you'll smile.

In cinemas now.