Neighborly Behavior

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is well directed. To be honest, though, I don't totally know how to feel about this movie. I cannot at all take Mr. Rogers seriously; the cutesy, simple way of talking about things, and the recourse to puppets and childishness is totally laughable to me. Maybe four or five times during Beautiful Day I laughed out loud with embarrassment. You're a grown man; put down the puppets. But Marielle Heller's film is, in many ways, aimed at audiences like me. The main character can't take Fred Rogers seriously either, and he sort of learns that even if you don't really get his way of moving through the world, there is still stuff to learn from it. Matthew Rhys is deeply affecting, and I really loved him in the movie. Tom Hanks is fine. I'm not sure I really get the casting. He's a very famous man playing another very famous man, and it's hard to see him as anything other than Tom Hanks. Oh yeah, and running him as a supporting actor for awards is total fraud. True enough, the movie is about Rhys's character chiefly, but Hanks opens and closes the movie, and the movie is most certainly his movie.