Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

If there’s any word to best describe “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” it’s this: clunky. So clunky. I had high hopes, I did – the trailer alone had me tearing up and after seeing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” like 37 times in 2018 I was ready for more Mr. Rogers. 

But this wasn’t it. To me, it felt like the Hollywood forces that be were capitalizing off of the documentary’s success, slapping together a script so bad I found myself wondering if I was in a movie theater or at home doing laundry with Lifetime on. The story was incredibly cheesy, the dialogue was awkward, and Tom Hanks performance, as well-researched as it was, failed to truly capture Fred Roger’s spirit.

And this isn’t a movie about Fred Rogers. It’s more about fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel’s journey back to his family – an interesting story, to be sure, but one that the film fails to make its audience care about. The two storylines (Lloyd and Fred/Lloyd and his family) feel extremely forced together and awkward. The complexities of family relationships were oversimplified and overacted by a cast whose chemistry left much to be desired.

I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. And I’m always down to support the movie theater industry. But if you want a complex, dynamic look at the life of Fred Rogers, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” isn’t the movie for you. Stay home and watch the documentary instead.