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A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (PG)

****

Director: Marielle Heller Starring: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Chris Cooper Rating: PG

WHO would have thought a daggy kids’ show host could teach his audience so much about the human condition? Certainly not hard-nosed investigative journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who takes his editor’s request for a 400-word puff piece about national living treasure Fred Rogers as a personal affront. Kind, endlessly patient and generous to a fault, the veteran TV personality is simply too good to be true.

So instead of fulfilling his simple brief to profile a “hero”, Vogel sets out to rattle a few skeletons, even after his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) pleads with him not to ruin her childhood.

Vogel is determined to reveal the real Mister Rogers. Screenwriters Micah Fitzerman Blue and Noah Harpster play along, teasing movie goers with false leads – at one point, there’s a suggestion that Rogers might have past anger-management issues, at another there’s a whiff of drama involving one of his sons.

But Rogers’ real secret is that he is just as virtuous as he appears — what you see is what you get. With A Beautiful Day In the Neighbourhood, which is based on Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire magazine article “Can You Say … Hero?”, director Marielle Heller (The Diary Of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) takes some big risks, beginning with the opening scene in which Hanks steps on to Rogers’ recreated TV set to perform his title song while zipping himself into a woolly red cardigan. But the two-time Oscar-winner, who is just as disciplined as the character he plays, gently disarms our natural scepticism in much the same manner as Rogers’ steadfastness eventually wins Vogel over.