A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood: Film Review

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood: Film Review

Cast: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Chris Cooper
Director: Marielle Heller

The latest from the director of the much underrated Can You Ever Forgive Me....is less about the US icon Mr Rogers and more about the surrogate father relationship that springs up between Hanks' seems-too-good-to-be-true TV icon and a jaded reporter Lloyd Vogel, played by The Americans' Matthew Rhys.

When Vogel is tasked with a 400-word profile piece on Rogers for a heroes issue of a magazine, he feels it goes against every fibre of his cynical being to deliver a puff piece. However, when he meets Rogers, he finds the reality of the man somewhat different to his expectations and begins to reflect on his own fractured relationship with his own father (Cooper, outstanding in a predictable role.)

It's easy to be dismissive of A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood's intentions.

Its desire to showcase a nice guy (played by Hanks in a quietly disarming role that at times veers dangerously close to feeling like a serial killer) and make you realise that good can always win out is almost cloying in its grab for sentimentality.

It helps little that at its core, this film is once again about the relationship between a father and a son - and that it does little differently with the narrative flow of what transpires, pushing Vogel more into the mentor counselling a disturbed and emotionally destroyed male.

Where it does present a point of difference is in its disarming framing of the film.

From having Rogers narrate an episode of his alarmingly honest US show and centring in on Vogel, the film wrongfoots you from the get go, drowning everything in a meta-sheen that's more creepy than charming.

Matters get more surreal on the visual presentation later on, but director Heller uses this, along with model shots of Rogers' toy village as cutaways, to disorienting affect throughout.

Ultimately, it's Rhys who deserves the most praise here, as Hanks' Rogers is more a sidelined character than the centre of a full biopic - little is unveiled of Rogers' life outside of the show other than some tossed-off tidbits that hint that his seemingly-perfect veneer is not all you'd expect.

If you're looking for an in-depth take on the man, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is not the film for that as it's more concerned with other dynamics than deeper analysis.