Tom Hanks teaches big life lessons in A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood
Fred who? In Australia that’s the one question plaguing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. But Tom Hanks’ performance in the title role saves it from slipping into irrelevance.
Leigh Paatsch
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This unusual blending of biopic, quaint comedy and light drama is a resolutely odd, yet undeniably endearing examination of the life’s work and lasting influence of the late Fred Rogers.
Fred who? In Australia, at the very least, it is this one question that will be the making or breaking of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhoodfor most viewers.
A long-time fixture on American afternoon television, “Mr. Rogers” (as he was popularly known) specialised in a uniquely personalised and highly effective brand of educational entertainment for children rivalled only by the gang over on Sesame Street.
However, because this movie trades heavily on a saintly reputation and naive mystique barely known outside the US, its full potential may not be realised for those who have never heard of the fella.
(Imagine, if you will, an Australian-made biopic of a Play School host. It would land with a quizzical thud anywhere beyond our shores. Virtually the same logic applies here.)
What does boost the stocks of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, however, is that the irrepressibly friendly and unpretentiously wise Mr Rogers is played by the great Tom Hanks (a current Oscar nominee for his superb work here).
It is Hanks’ rare ability to quickly and consistently convey the human essence of a character that saves this movie from an enigmatic retreat into complete irrelevance.
From the first time we cast eyes on Hanks as Fred Rogers, we immediately understand this was someone who not only meant well when it came to the responsibility of entertaining children. This was someone who made a quantifiable difference to millions of young lives, and never took this rare gift for granted.
Matthew Rhys (of TV’s The Americans) co-stars as Lloyd Vogel, a cynical writer looking for cracks in the glass-always-full veneer of Rogers.
Putting a slide rule to the screenplay, there is actually more of Lloyd Vogel (a fictionalised stand-in for Esquire Magazine journalist Tom Junod, whose award-winning 1998 profile of Rogers inspired much of what is chronicled here) that Mr Rogers himself.
Even this seeming imbalance ends up working in favour of the movie, particularly in an unexpectedly moving final act.
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (PG)
Director: Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Starring: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper.
Rating: ***1/2
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