A
anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
Guest
Spent the day at the Middleburg Film Festival and got to see the Tom Hanks Mister Rogers film 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'. I believe it launches nationwide in November. Anyway, most of us grew up with Fred Rogers in our homes and this is a film that is certainly a lot less about him, and more about one journalist's personal relationship with him. If you are going in thinking this movie is going to tell you about how Fred Rogers became Mister Rogers, you'll be really disappointed.
The story for the film is inspired by (noting the events in the film are not the actual events) an Esquire article by journalist Tom Junod entitled 'Can you say...Hero?' which is about Fred Rogers and Tom Junod's experiences interviewing/profiling him for Esquire. Junod is an entirely different character in the film, named 'Lloyd' (played by the excellent Matthew Rhys), who is also an investigative journalist at Esquire. He's hard hitting and brash, and he's assigned a puff piece to sort of relax a bit. And though he's first upset and turned off by such a corny assignment, through his interactions with Mister Rogers (Tom Hanks) he is able to confront and better deal with some personal difficulties in his life - being a new father, dealing with an absentee father (played by Chris Cooper), anger issues, and marital issues. He eventually figures out that there is no Mister Rogers and Fred Rogers - they're one and the same.
There are a few insights into Fred Rogers' life, but the big takeaway is that he genuinely cared about people, and he lived his philosophy each and every day. There are a couple of neat camera tricks that nudge the movie towards a bit of surrealism, but nothing that takes away from the narrative which beats like a drum - 'above all else, be kind.' It's a nice movie that will make you hopeful and long for simpler times when Mister Rogers helped explain death, hospitals, and war using hand puppets, but I would have liked a little more of Fred Rogers when not on set. My only other small gripe is that Tom Hanks is sort of distracting as Mister Rogers - he has the voice and inflection down, but he just looks like Tom Hanks and that's sometimes hard to get over.
I'll add that after the film, I was surprised to read how wealthy the Rogers family was - owned large chunks of property in Nantucket, were very philanthropic, and that Fred was an Ivy Leaguer.
Anyway, worth checking out if you're over Marvel movies. I would be surprised if the film gets a lot of Oscar consideration too.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/
The story for the film is inspired by (noting the events in the film are not the actual events) an Esquire article by journalist Tom Junod entitled 'Can you say...Hero?' which is about Fred Rogers and Tom Junod's experiences interviewing/profiling him for Esquire. Junod is an entirely different character in the film, named 'Lloyd' (played by the excellent Matthew Rhys), who is also an investigative journalist at Esquire. He's hard hitting and brash, and he's assigned a puff piece to sort of relax a bit. And though he's first upset and turned off by such a corny assignment, through his interactions with Mister Rogers (Tom Hanks) he is able to confront and better deal with some personal difficulties in his life - being a new father, dealing with an absentee father (played by Chris Cooper), anger issues, and marital issues. He eventually figures out that there is no Mister Rogers and Fred Rogers - they're one and the same.
There are a few insights into Fred Rogers' life, but the big takeaway is that he genuinely cared about people, and he lived his philosophy each and every day. There are a couple of neat camera tricks that nudge the movie towards a bit of surrealism, but nothing that takes away from the narrative which beats like a drum - 'above all else, be kind.' It's a nice movie that will make you hopeful and long for simpler times when Mister Rogers helped explain death, hospitals, and war using hand puppets, but I would have liked a little more of Fred Rogers when not on set. My only other small gripe is that Tom Hanks is sort of distracting as Mister Rogers - he has the voice and inflection down, but he just looks like Tom Hanks and that's sometimes hard to get over.
I'll add that after the film, I was surprised to read how wealthy the Rogers family was - owned large chunks of property in Nantucket, were very philanthropic, and that Fred was an Ivy Leaguer.
Anyway, worth checking out if you're over Marvel movies. I would be surprised if the film gets a lot of Oscar consideration too.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/
