Review of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) by Kenr — 04 Oct 2020

I’m sceptical when approaching movies along these lines and if you are also, do yourself (and everyone around you) a favour – just watch it regardless. There are many scenes in this pic that go to places very few movies, especially today’s, would dare to. That doesn’t exactly mean the moviemakers have been honest enough to tell the whole story of Fred Rogers and his remarkable personality but, where they do go --leads us to find out more for ourselves-- so that’s a good thing. The unusual sets are used with great success as stepping stones to other parts of the story - creating a better than might be expected connection to the real-life situations. What was to be expected is that democratically weighted PC Hollywood - shows little interest in exploring where Mr Roger’s sensitively-tuned philosophy was born. Here, he’s mostly presented as a humanitarian who wants to make the world, and our relationships within it better for us all...but there’s more to this complex TV personality than they care to explore. Apart from this, ‘A Beautiful Day’ is modern movie making at its finest and most meaningful with well-realised performances throughout. There’s another story about the time this real-life man, who, while being presented with an Emmy, dared to tell Television to ‘shut-up’ (in a nice way) and take ten seconds of silence, to stop screeching on about its own blindness to its own worthlessness - and spare a thought for all the real people, who during their developing years helped it/them become something better. Of course, Mr Rogers was talking about thoughts and feelings many would now, no longer recognise or understand - especially when you look at the endlessness of its mostly soulless, fake-reality. This is certainly a man finely tuned to understanding our own reality.

Should engage most audiences as it puts up a mirror to our own relationships and how we deal with them. One of the year’s best for people who want more than simplistic action flicks, and for those who still know how to extract the very best that movies about intelligent people might have to offer.