‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ isn’t about Fred Rogers himself, but his impact

Posted on November 29, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

Last year, we got the wonderful documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” recounting the life and career of Fred Rogers, the man who impacted generations of children’s lives through his program, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

In fact, the documentary was so good, I was curious at first why we might need another film about Mr. Rogers just one year later, even if it features the extremely talented Tom Hanks (“The Post”) stepping into the tennis shoes of Mr. Rogers.

Fortunately, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” isn’t exactly about Mr. Rogers himself, just like the 1998 “Esquire” magazine article, “Can You Say… Hero?” by journalist Tom Junod, wasn’t really about Mr. Rogers either. Instead, both the article and the film it inspired are about how Mr. Rogers affected others in such positive ways.

In the film, we meet Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys, “The Americans”), a magazine journalist known for hard-hitting features. In his personal life, he and his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson, “This Is Us”) have just welcomed a baby boy into their lives. Lloyd is still trying to come to grips with being a father, especially considering the fractured relationship he has with his own dad (Chris Cooper, “The Bourne Identity”).

Then Lloyd gets his next assignment, pen a short puff piece about Fred Rogers for an upcoming issue on heroes. Of course, for Lloyd, no assignment is that simple, so he goes into his interview expecting to tear down another American figure, despite his wife’s plea to not ruin her childhood. But Fred Rogers (Hanks) is not anything like he expected, and the resulting discussions will forever change his outlook on life.

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