Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I didn’t watch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when I was a kid; maybe my life would be substantially better now if I had. Or maybe not. One of the intriguing aspects of this documentary is that it praises its subject, for sure, but also leaves just enough wiggle room in that appreciation that one can think that maybe the Sweatered One wasn’t necessarily all good in his impact. Surely, something made these recent generations of kids a little full of themselves, and it’s not inconceivable that hand puppets played a part. But that’s not the biggest takeaway from this portrait; the overarching theme here is, without question, Fred Rogers’ genuine decency, which led him to do best (as he saw it) with perhaps only minor missteps. Overall, this film is a laudable profile of a laudable man that elicits appreciation and occasionally touches the heart. Is that the entire big picture truth? Don’t know, but we don’t really live our lives at those deeper levels. Sometimes what we obviously think and feel is the thing that matters. So, perhaps, it is with this man, and with this work.