A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This movie definitely was not what I expected.  I thought it was going to be a biopic about Fred Rogers.  Instead, it is the story of journalist Tom Junod (LLoyd Vogel in the movie) and how just meeting Fred Rogers changed his outlook on life, and in the end made him a better person.  That approach might have even made this a more interesting movie.  Lloyd Vogel, who is played by Matthew Rhys, is a jaded journalist whose reputation is so tarnished by his angry approach, that he is having a hard time getting interviews.  Esquire magazine is doing a spread about American heroes and asks Vogel to write an article about TV’s Fred Rogers.  They figure it would be hard to mess this assignment up.  And Rogers is the only person who agrees to let Vogel  interview him anyway.   Vogel is sure he will uncover the dirt on this way too nice appearing guy, but he doesn’t.  There apparently isn’t any dirt, he’s the real thing!  The Fred Rogers you see on the screen is the Fred Rogers you get in real life too.  Vogel and Rogers forge an unlikely friendship in which Fred shares some of his problems in life; like his boys’ troubled teenage years trying to cope with a famous father or the fact that he was teased when he was a kid for being chubby.  Rogers helps Vogel deal with his absent, philandering father (played by Chris Cooper) and his mother’s death many years ago, which still haunts him.  This is such a sweet movie, I don’t see how anyone could leave feeling sad.  Because Mr. Rogers was such a nice man, there are all kinds of rumors about him, he hated kids, swore like a sailor, or was a Navy Seal.  Not so! This movie does an excellent job of showing you what made this man tick and how he was able to touch the individuals he met and how they touched him.  Also, Mrs. Rogers gives this movie two thumbs up and apppears in a brief cameo in a Chinese restaurant.  If you don’t want to miss her, look for pictures on the internet so you know what to expect.