Review: Marielle Heller Puts Forth a Therapeutic Force in 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'

“It’s not about Mr. Rogers really is it? I mean, it is, but…” The line isn’t finished as the character trails off in the later moments of Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but in a different context and in a different movie, the line would be a forewarning to the audience that the film they sat down for might not be what they expected. After the mainstream success of last year’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and the announcement of Tom Hanks playing the beloved Fred Rogers, it seemed almost certain that Heller would focus the film on the iconic children’s show host. But to paraphrase another moment in the film: sometimes when adults make plans they don’t go accordingly. This isn’t the Mr. Rogers movie people perhaps planned on seeing, but even when expectations are foiled, it don’t mean the result still can’t be great. 

The film is as small as Fred Roger’s ideas are big. Big cities are shrunk to finger-sized skyscrapers designed to replicate the set of the second longest running children’s show of all time on public television. Rogers is magnetic and fleeting, often obscured and crammed into tiny spaces as he puppeteers. We feel his wake more than we see him and we feel his ideas in spite of his absence. Whether it’s a crowded subway collectively singing his theme song or the knowing glances strangers give him when he sits down at a restaurant, every moment he occupies seems to illustrate Roger’s undying and undivided attention to whomever is in front of him. Often when he’s onscreen, it’s us. 

Despite this, the center of the film is not Rogers but the family of Esquire journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys). The cynical Vogel has been given a four hundred-word assignment to profile Rogers, and he juggles it against an ever-increasing list of personal life issues. It’s a clever framing based in fact and doubles as the emotional core of the film. So much so that it comes as a shock to nobody when Vogel’s unprocessed trauma becomes the crux and strength of the film. On paper this might sound precisely where a Mr. Roger’s movie might lead, but Heller’s journey to catharsis feels earned. To say the movie is therapeutic is an understatement. It is unabashedly so. 

Rhys is appropriately skeptical as Vogel, often emulating the cautiousness with which modern audiences tend to view heroic figures like Rogers, especially in recent years when icons succumb to scandal. But this is not Saving Mr. Banks. The film sidesteps any notion of worshipping Rogers or smoothing over aspects that don't fit our image of him. It attempts to present Rogers as he was: human. Hanks is soft spoken without venturing into mimicry. He decides against giving a performance that matches every physical aspect of the iconic figure, but is still able to capture his allure and spirit. The same can be said for both Heller and writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster. They seamlessly find a way to let Hanks champion Rogers’ values without providing a series of melodramatic “Oscar moments” — even if Rogers might have had his fair share of those in real life. 

 Heller manages to espouse the ideals of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in the very way Rogers himself did. Not through top notch production design nor particularly eloquent language. Not through stellar acting nor subtle metaphor. Heller captures the elusive feeling that brought Rogers decades of longevity. The feeling that someone hears you, understands you, accepts you while reaching through the fourth wall to help you. And what a magic trick it is when it's pulled off on the big screen.

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