Recently, I went to watch Won’t You Be My Neighbor, a documentary on Mr Rogers and here is what I thought about it. Contains spoilers for Won’t You Be My Neighbor ? (2018)

So this is the first documentary I am reviewing , so I am just going to say what I learn and feel about this documentary and see how it goes.

Fred Rogers initially wanted to be a minister but he saw what television could do and I guess he feel that he can make better use of television than most people at the time. He felt that it doesn’t feel right that clowns humiliating themselves are the main attraction of television at that time. Television could be used better other than to make people laugh at pies being thrown, so Fred Rogers decided to go into television.

Since he live in Pittsburgh, he went to this television studio called WQED and did a children program there. He used free films to record but the problem with that is how the films would crash easily and on live television you have to find a solution. So he stick this tiger puppet through the clock and started talking, no one expected it to be a hit but this will become the foundation of Mr Rogers’ use of puppets.

This documentary definitely did what documentaries are suppose to do, it taught me a lot about Fred Rogers. Even though, I never met this guy or watched his show, I felt that I’m in a room with him during this whole documentary. This documentary made me feel that he is alive and it was even sadder when it came to the part of his memorial.

In terms of order of what stories to tell, I think this documentary did a pretty good job, we did not start on when Mr Rogers was a child but instead start on how he started the television show that soon became Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. We see small animated parts that explain Mr Rogers’ childhood using a tiger puppet that was animated in a vibrant paper-cut way, which makes sense because animation or cartoon can resonate with children, like how Mr Rogers was able to bridge the gap between children and adults and was able to have this relationship with children. And the puppet that Mr Rogers was most fond of was Daniel the tiger, the puppet that kickstarted his whole career.

The documentary also did a great job with its music, there is always to slowly rising theme that would triumphantly play when they were showing Mr Rogers’ work on screen. When it’s a flashback scene about Mr Rogers childhood, there would be a sad theme in the background.

In terms of the pacing, I felt that they kind of stretched the documentary as much as they can, this is entirely based on opinion but they could have made the documentary 1 hour long instead of 1 hour 30 minutes.

The thing is that Fred Rogers is such a pure human being but there would obviously be people who hate him or made fun of him. Eddie Murphy made a parody on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood but when he got to meet Fred Rogers, Eddie Murphy just hugged him. Mr Rogers thinks that some of this parodies are genuinely funny and people who made this have kindness in their hearts. When you have someone who talks to children, there would definitely be people thinking that he should “man-up” but there’s really nothing wrong with talking to children. Even at his funeral, there are parents who drag their kids to hold signs cursing at Mr Rogers when Mr Rogers was the one actually responsible for properly raising their kids better than those parents.

Mr Rogers’ use of puppets was able to communicate to children and adults alike and he just has this gentle personality and combined with all the characters of his television show, all of which he voiced, you got one of the most meaningful children television shows that was not afraid to tackle hard topics.

There was a story about children jumping off high parts of buildings, thinking they are Superman and this made Mr Rogers so angry that he came back from a break and set up the studio just to address that situation. Saying how parents should know how to protect their child and I found that very self-sacrificing of him.

The documentary definitely did a very good job in getting all the necessary people interviewed (with great interview questions)to tell the story of Fred Rogers, they even got some footage of Fred Rogers’ interviews. Having all these footage, the people behind this documentary managed to piece everything together, making a beautiful documentary that tells you everything you need to know about Mr Rogers.

To be honest, the ending of this documentary was definitely one of the saddest, most emotional thing I have ever seen on screen, due to what’s on screen , the music and the person that they are talking about.

Ratings: 8.5/10

Sorry if some of the pictures here can’t be seen, it’s mostly because of how weird the WordPress app have become after its recent update (Yes I use an app to write all this reviews) . But let’s just think positive about this and hope it gets fix soon.