Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I remember how HIGHLY anticipated this movie was. It lived up to the hype!

Putting together an astonishing array of footage from throughout the career of Fred Rogers, we learn about the journey of this man who wanted nothing more than to teach children how to feel and express love, even in their moments of pain. Some of the best moments of the movie are when he teaches children about racism and death during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

As someone born in the 80s, I had never seen his shows from back then and certainly hadn’t seen his black and white early stuff on local television in the 50s. Also not his brief foray into primetime programming in the late 70s and early 80s. It was amazing how much work went into this film and how much I learned!

I really wanted to learn more about Mr. Rogers as a person, wondering if maybe he dealt with an abusive father from whom he wanted to be different. Turns out the senior Rogers clearly loved his kids but simply couldn’t express that as openly as he wanted because society back then wouldn’t let men show emotion. Fred helped make it easier for the generations of children for whom he was an extra parent. I also wondered if he struggled to be as good a dad to his own kids as he was to his audience. One of his actual sons is in the movie though. He said he could tell when dad was angry but Fred would simply take deep breaths and you could see the negative energy leaving his body. We still badly need the sort of lessons Mr. Rogers taught everyone, given how much of a stain toxic masculinity remains on our society.

After watching the movie I felt like something was missing and it wasn’t until watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood that I realized what it was. As I said in that movie’s video review, Mr. Rogers already comes across as so perfect that there’s not really room for him, from the perspective of us viewers, to grow as a person. We also don’t really see any struggles as far as keeping the show on the air, etc. A story needs to have some sort of conflict and lacking that this comes across less like a movie and more like a college lecture on how a man wanted to infuse the world with more love and kindness and successfully did so.

That’s such compelling material for a lecture, peppered with such a dazzling bunch of archival clips, that I’m still giving Won’t You Be My Neighbor? an extremely high rating though! Many were shocked that it did not receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, but as a voter for the Spirit Awards I’m proud to say it WON that award there. It also became the 12^th highest grossing documentary of all time. 😊

Bottom Line: A must for fans of Fred Rogers (or any fans of feeling warm inside!)

Up Next: Last year’s OTHER Mr. Rogers movie.