11/24/19 - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) - 6/10

I think this is a perfectly fine film, charming, endearing and wholesome. But I think I will be on the outside of the consensus here; I did not love this friendly stroll down the neighborhood. It did not unleash the floodgates of waterworks, nor did it yank on my heartstrings; it satisfiably did its thing, but i was not awed or imbued with a sense of the magnificent. It is a decent film but I don’t think it clicked with me in the way that many others it might have.

I didn’t care for the framing device and the magical realism felt...off. I didn’t find it fascinating or enchanting; honestly, it kind of pulled me out of the narrative when it popped up on the screen. I also wanted those emotive hooks to stick deeper and pull harder. Rhys pushes me to the edge with his enigmatic sorrow-glazed face, but the second emotional shoe never dropped.

I would say that the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor expressed similar themes and goals, but better. An empathetic expose that brings us closer to this miraculous man while activating the feels: check and mate. This is nice, but that is sublime.

Heller pushes herself, touching back into her first film Diary of a Teenage Girl, blending the wondrous mentally free expositions with outside the standard world. I respect what she attempted here, but I did find this to be the least of all of her films so far. It is a good movie, but I did not see the amazement or teary-eyed bliss that so many others do.