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Nailed It

As Fred Rogers is one of my personal heroes, I was interested in seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when it first came out in 2019, but by then my hearing made any movie viewing without captioning impossible. When I saw Tubi had added it to their collection of free movies I was really pleased.

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers with eerie precision, and an obvious respect for the man who influenced generations of young children. The relationship he develops with an angry, damaged journalist who comes to interview him is heart-warming but seems unlikely (if you've been around as many damaged people as I have, you know they usually don't respond well to kindness and understanding) but I was willing to go along with it. I just disagree with the message of bringing harmful people back into your life for the sake of forgiveness, especially when they have not changed or stopped causing harm.

Everyone has their own opinion of Mr. Rogers, but he once said something that explained so much that I didn't understand about life: "Love is at the root of everything. All learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it." For that I will always be grateful.

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