Movie Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

As you might expect, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is not cinematically breathtaking, so if we were using that criteria alone, I would recommend that you wait until this movie comes out on video; however, if you are one of those who likes to send a message to Hollywood about the type of content you like to see on the big screen in a way they understand (with your dollars), then you’ll definitely want to make it to the theaters for this one.

My husband and I went and saw this movie together. The movie ended up not being what either of us had expected, but in different ways. I also think that even though I liked it well enough, the movie struck a deeper chord with my husband, which I guess makes sense seeing as the movie is largely about a man’s relationship with his aging father and with his own newborn son. I appreciated the fact that childhood trauma, learned coping mechanisms, pain, fear, marriage, and fatherhood were addressed through a masculine lens. I could be wrong, but I believe I see these more often explored through the feminine experience on screen.

I saw the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor in the theater last year and was anticipating that this film might be a rehashing of things I already knew about Mister Rogers, but my fears were unfounded. It’s less about Mister Rogers himself than what Mister Roger’s message of love looks like in real-life—how the revolutionary act of love, both for oneself and one’s fellow man, can heal what appears to be an irreparably broken place. How does a simple message of feeling one’s feelings and acting out from a loving, safe place fit into a world that often seems complicated, ugly, and unsafe?