4 Snouts Up for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood movie on Prime

Even though I absolutely loved Won’t You Be my Neighbor? (link to my review), the documentary about Fred Rogers, I resisted seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood because the movie poster picture of Tom Hanks brought back bad memories of Forrest Gump.  Indeed, if you look at the posters, I think *they* are deliberately calling up that memory.  (And, yes, I know I’m in the 1% of people who did not love that movie.  So much so, actually, that for years whenever I met someone who didn’t like Forrest Gump, I adopted them as a lifelong friend.)  Don’t get me wrong, I love Tom Hanks and recognize him, as all PBS viewers should, as one of our leading authorities on World War II having lived through the shooting of Saving Private Ryan.

So despite all that the other night, it struck me as the perfect movie to watch at home streaming on Prime with my mother .  She’d get the quiet sweetness of the Mister Rogers scenes and I’d get to see if I liked it.  Well I did.  I’m not sure it was a tour de force as far as movie-making goes (unlike Little Women, still angry at the Academy), but the story and the approach to the material is absolute genius.

I am not a movie crybaby.  Despite my profession, I don’t seek out tearjerkers. Yet I found this story of the relationship between this hard-edged (based on real life) Esquire journalist Lloyd Vogel and Fred Rogers beautiful and affecting.   Vogel is played perfectly by Mathew Rhys (my heartthrob from The Americans—not much of a stretch from soviet spy to disaffected journalist lol) while Rogers is completely nailed by Tom Hanks, I must say.  Throughout the film I alarmed my mother by saying “dammit” and reaching for another Kleenex, angry at myself that I was so deeply touched.

The story works because all of us watching the film are Lloyd Vogel.  We watch it through our cynicism, our fear of vulnerability, perhaps our distrust of the idea of unconditional love.  We see Rogers through Vogel’s eyes and we experience what its like to have Rogers see Vogel through the eyes of unconditional love.  The story of Rogers' life and work is love.  This story allows us to feel that love deeply through Hanks’ gorgeous inhabitance of Fred Rogers.