‘A Beautiful Day’ isn’t the biopic you expect
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is what the movie isn’t. Despite the images of Tom Hanks as a beatific Mr. Rogers that first flooded social media this year. The film isn’t the Mr. Rogers story.
Sure, the kind spirit of perpetually serene kids-show host Fred Rogers is here, and Hanks does a fine job of capturing his essence. But this isn’t a biopic by any means. You don’t learn how Mr. Rogers came to be, nor do you see him age through the years. There also is no Mr. Rogers death scene (now, that would be a downer of an ending).
Set in the ‘90s, the film instead is the story of a cynical Esquire reporter
named Lloyd Vogler. Matthew Rhys plays Lloyd with a helmeted hairdo that brings to mind one of his disguises from “The Americans.”
Lloyd is assigned to write a profile on Mr. Rogers. “You hired me as an investigative journalist – I don’t do puff pieces!” Lloyd barks at his editor (the journalism in the movie never feels quite right). Lloyd’s aggressive reporting techniques (no, puff pieces, remember!) have made it hard for him to line up interviews, but Mr. Rogers agrees to a sitdown. He is just as calm and caring as his TV persona and It turns out to be just what Lloyd needs, as he’s a wounded soul with a father from whom he’s estranged.
Mr. Rogers essentially counsels Lloyd during their interview sessions, doling out the kind of gentle platitudes he might say during an episode of his TV show and probing into the reporter’s psyche. Once you can see where the movie is going, it becomes terribly easy to predict what will happen and even the dialogue. Things can get cloying at times — such as when a train full of passengers serenades Mr. Rogers with his theme tune. But director Marielle Heller (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) for the most part resists the temptation to go for the tear ducts.
One is left wanting to know more about Mr. Rogers, but the film reduces him to little more than a kind of superhero family therapist.