A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
This is an overrated film. If you want to see a brilliant story about Fred Rogers, hunt down the documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018).
I am convinced that Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has gained wide praise because who can criticize either Tom Hanks or Fred Rogers? However, despite the fact that it borders on being Anti-American to do so, this proves to be a very disappointing movie.
The essential problem with the film is that it focuses on Roger’s using the same approach to help troubled adults as he did young children. In the process, Hanks has Rogers become a light weight psychiatrist who can help an emotionally troubled newspaper reporter by simply using verbal bromines that 8 year-olds loved.
Please don’t feel that I am trying to find the way to insult Mr. Rogers, as I am still upset that the documentary referred to above was denied an Oscar nomination. Nonetheless, this film felt forced and juvenile from the beginning.
On the other hand, I was left inspired by Mr. Roger’s advice that adults remember stuffed animals that they had as children. To be quite honest, of the many stuffed animals that I place on a stairway at our house decorating the Christmas season is a cute little bear wearing a small shirt and a hat. That was an animal that my son loved as a little boy and I have saved it even though he is now 50 years of age.
I still love that stuffed animal, and I store him in a special place until each holiday season. So, I suppose that Mr. Rogers and I do have a little bit in common.
