Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on the new portable.
Like a lot of Gen-X, I grew up with Fred Rogers as a constant part of my childhood. When I was in my teens, bagging on Mr. Rogers was an easy go-to punchline. Like most teens, I was jaded and too cool for such things as the simplistic Mr. Rogers. Now, as an adult, I see just how wonderfully pure he really was. Fred Rogers would have been the first to say he wasn’t a saint, but he might be the closest we’ve seen to one in a very long time. Fred Rogers genuinely tried to see the good in everyone, and tried to show that good to everyone as well. The mantras he had of acceptance, of liking people for who they were, are easily mocked, but almost impossible to dismiss. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? only cemented this truth. The semi-fictional A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood takes a different path, and while it focuses more on a fictionalized version of a real journalist, Fred Rogers (played by Tom Hanks very much channeling the man himself), casts a long shadow over the proceedings.
Our journalist is Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a talented investigative journalist working for Esquire magazine. Lloyd, while a good writer, is a miserable son of a bitch by all accounts. He has a child with his wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), but he’s inattentive at best, spends very little time with the infant, and works too much. He’s cynical about his sister’s upcoming wedding (she appears to be a serial bride), and much more distressed when he discovers his father (Chris Cooper) will be attending. We learn over time that Jerry Vogel abandoned his family while his wife—Lloyd’s mother—was dying. Naturally, there’s a lot of anger just below the surface here. In fact, at the wedding, Lloyd and Jerry get in a fist fight.
