Tom Hanks makes a perfect Mister Rogers

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood makes a strong case for kindness.

Part of me that would like nothing better than to tell you that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a movie about the relationship between TV's Mister Rogers, the nicest man who ever lived, and a journalist named Lloyd Vogel is a sappy wallow in comforting red sweaters and innocuous bromides about how we ought to treat one another -- kindly and with recognition that each of us is special.

You'll find a bit of that in director Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but the movie goes beyond cliche to address topics that seem charmingly out-of-touch with the current national mood: Sincerity and concern for others.

To keep the movie from becoming as soothing as the treacly piano that opened Mister Rogers Neighborhood, the show that made Fred Rogers famous, the movie supplies a skeptic.

Vogel (Matthew Rhys) reluctantly accepts an assignment to write a short piece on Fred Rogers for Esquire. His editor (Christine Lahti) thinks a soft feature will do the hard-hitting investigative reporter some good.

I haven't mentioned that Mister Rogers is played by Tom Hanks because that information almost seems superfluous. If you think about it, who else could play the soft-spoken TV star who tried to encourage kids to talk about the things that troubled them, as well as the things that made them happy?

Hanks portrays a character who works hard to make sure that he's more interested in others than he is in himself. Insult Mister Rogers and he's likely to respond by thanking you for your perspective.

The movie turns Mister Rogers into Vogel's personal life coach. At his sister's wedding, Vogel gets into a physical altercation with his estranged father (Chris Cooper). At times, Vogel's problems so dominate the movie that Mister Rogers threatens to become a supporting character, the guy who drops in on the story to make sure that everyone's OK.

Susan Kelechi Watson portrays Vogel's wife, a woman who thinks that her angry husband ought to make peace with his father. She's Vogel's live-in Mister Rogers.

Based on a 1998 article by Tom Junod, the film chronicles the growing friendship between a subject and a journalist who doesn't know how to handle Rogers' interest in him. It takes a while for Vogel to be disarmed by Fred Rogers.

Heller makes creative use of the Rogers' sets, weaving them into the real-life drama that often finds its way back to Mister Rogers' TV work and presenting the entire story as if it were one episode from Rogers' show.

The movie insists that Fred Rogers wasn't a perfect human being, just a sincere and conscientious one, although if Fred Rogers ever lost his temper or resorted to profanity, you won't see it here.

The generation of kids who grew up watching Mister Rogers probably will supply the adults who'll love this movie and who happily will return to his beautiful neighborhood. I can't say that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is one of my favorite movies, but why object to a movie that dramatizes the impact of kindness and healing and encourages us to understand that behind a lot of the angry expressions we see, there are often deep wellsprings of hurt.

Addicted to the highs of madness

Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby co-star in a movie about bipolar lovers.

A deglamorized Katie Holmes plays a young poet suffering from bipolar disorder in Touched With Fire, a movie inspired by a 1993 non-fiction exploration of mania, depression and creativity by Kay Redfield Jamison.

Written and directed by Paul Dalio -- himself a sufferer from bipolar disorder -- the movie version teams Holmes with Luke Kirby, who portrays a struggling bipolar wannabe artist who wanders the streets of New York drawing graffiti. Kirby's Marco doesn't need much encouragement to advance his avidly delivered theories about the universe and his place in it. He can't believe that he doesn't hail from a distant planet where he'd feel more at home. He wants to get as high as the stars.

Dalio's script raises questions about whether it's possible to live a daringly creative life without simultaneously falling prey to bouts of madness. If Carla and Marco stay on their meds will they lose the creative spark that brings them together when both are hospitalized?

Once released from care, Carla and Marco become a couple, raising questions about how fit they are to make the kinds of decisions that now will be required of them, particularly when Carla becomes pregnant.

Katie's mom (Christine Lahti) and her father (Bruce Altman) are rightfully worried. Marco's father (Griffin Dunne) is no less concerned.
Both Holmes and Kirby are more than up to the task, and Dalio mostly tells the story from their points of view. In their manic phases, it's as if both have awakened inside Van Gogh's Starry Night, a painting that figures prominently in the story. Carla and Marco are energized by the enchantment of their vertiginous upswings in mood.

And that leads to another question. Would it be worth giving up the highest of highs for a stable life or are the peak points of mania so wildly intense and visionary that normality pales by comparison?

The problem Dalio has stems from this focus. Telling the story mostly from Carla and Marco's perspective tends to make us sympathetic to their desires (particularly strong with Marco) not to give up the inspirational peaks of their manic periods.

Dalio tries to temper this view with an awkwardly inserted, late-picture appearance by Jamison. She assures Carla and Marco that they can take their meds without diminishing their creative powers.

This less-than-organic ploy (almost a public service announcement) comes off as a near apology for shifting our sympathies toward Carla and Marco, an ungainly reminder that bipolar disorder doesn't count as a higher form of insight and fun.

None of this is to say that Dalio's movie fails to illuminate many of the problems stemming from bipolar disorder, and it finds credible ways of illustrating bipolar highs without too much overstatement.

And there powerfully observed moments. Near the beginning, Dunne's character visits his son, who hasn't been answering his phone. The young man's apartment has become a filthy clutter of books and junk. Marco has quit his job.

To us, it appears as if Marco's life has become a hopeless shambles: He, on the other hand, believes he has put his life on exactly the right course.

That kind of scene -- and there are others -- keeps Touched With Fire honest and affecting.