A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Rating
C- (71/100)
Three words
Slow, Biography?, Unexpected
Brief Review
The movie is based on cover article from Esquire magazine and follows a cynical journalist as he writes a profile of Mr. Rogers. So I think I had two issues going into this movie. 1) While I remember Mr. Rogers, I don’t think I was ever an avid fan of his show as a kid and 2) I think I had the wrong expectations for what this movie was. I’m not sure if I just didn’t know what this was going to be like or if the movie is intentionally not what you are expecting. Either way, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. I went into this movie assuming I would be watching a biography on Mr. Rogers. This wasn’t really a biography. This was a pseudo-biography/regular movie at the same time? I’m not really quite sure which it is honestly. The lack of clarity there made it an odd movie for me. What I will say this movie does really well is capture the essence of Mr. Rogers though. It really is made in the same spirit that he was trying to accomplish with his show. Also Tom Hanks does a great job portraying the ever optimistic Mr. Rogers and Matthew Rhys does a great job portraying the cynical journalist. If you were/are a big fan of Mr. Rogers and as long as you know it isn’t a biography, then you will probably like this a lot. I on the other hand don’t know if I necessarily didn’t like it per se, but I wouldn’t watch it again. It just isn’t for me but I can see how a lot of people would like this.
