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‘Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ Review: The Heroism of Christian Decency
by John Nolte

Lloyd Vogel (a superb Matthew Rhys) appears to have it all. He lives in Manhattan as an award-winning writer for Esquire, is married to the beautiful and supportive Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), and now he has a son. But there is a cancer metastasizing within him.

For decades, Lloyd’s fooled himself into believing he’s honoring his dead mother by holding on to the rage he feels toward a father who abandoned him as a child. And while this rage might feel like a cocoon, an excuse to keep a narcissistic focus on self and keep everyone at arm’s length, it is really a prison.

In other words, Lloyd is miserable. He just doesn’t know why. He thinks he knows. He’s pretty sure the world is to blame — a world filled with liars and broken families and manipulators and pushy editors and needy wives and fathers who abandon their families and then come back to make amends at the worst possible time. But with a guy like Lloyd it’s always the “worst possible time” to ask something of him. You see, Lloyd’s got this baby now and his reputation as a jaded hatchet man is hurting his career because people won’t talk to him. And now, Lloyd, an important investigative journalist, has just been handed a demeaning assignment to put together 400 words about Mr. Rogers.

Yes, that Mr. Rogers.

What a pain. This means Lloyd has to go all the way to Pittsburgh, where he will only be allowed 20 minutes with the children’s television icon… But Lloyd has an idea… He’s going to write about the real Mr. Rogers. He’s not interested in the goody-goody, too-good-to-be-true television character. Lloyd will rip the mask off. Actually, Lloyd has to rip off the mask. Lloyd’s entire reason for being is to justify holding on to that rage, to his cocoon, and he does this by proving to himself, over and over again, that people are inherently awful.

First there was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, then Joker, then Ford v. Ferrari, and now A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Four classic crowd-pleasers. When’s the last time that happened over the course of a Hollywood year, much less a few months?

Continues - recommended:

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/11/22/beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood-review-the-heroism-of-christian-decency/

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