Can you say … beautiful?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a beautiful film. Whimsical, sweet, complicated and full of warmth, just like that polite guy who used to put on his cardigan and sneakers for his long-running children’s show on PBS.

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers in this movie, and you don’t get more perfect casting than the world’s most likable actor playing one of history’s most likable guys. (The recent reveal that Hanks is an actual sixth cousin of Rogers comes as no surprise.)

Hanks plays Rogers in an honorable way. He doesn’t fully impersonate the man so much as adapt some of his mannerisms, his winning smile, and that slow, concerned cadence in his voice. The performance stands as a terrific homage.

But Fred Rogers is a supporting player (albeit a mighty important and present one) in director Marielle Heller’s heartfelt movie (based on a real-life friendship between Rogers and journalist Tom Junod). The main protagonist is Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys of The Americans), a troubled journalist who grumbles upon getting an assignment to do a profile on the PBS icon—the guy with a “hokey” TV show—for Esquire magazine.

Lloyd journeys to the show’s home station, WQED in Pittsburgh, Penn., to see the man in action, and Rogers instantly starts interviewing the journalist as he is being interviewed. Lloyd bristles at first, but over the course of the film, the two become friends, and Rogers helps him in his dealings with his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), his newborn son and his dying father (a mightily good Chris Cooper).

Heller brilliantly frames the film as an episode of the TV show, starting with Hanks delivering the infamous welcoming song, and then introducing Lloyd as a friend who needs help. The characters travel between different cities that are depicted like the train sets that had a presence throughout the TV show.

The father-son aspect of the film wasn’t part of Junod’s 1998 article—“Can You Say … Hero?” But fictional or not, that relationship is handled heart-wrenchingly well. For his part, Junod has acknowledged that the friendship on display in the film is much like the one he had with Rogers.

As an adult, I have a new appreciation for Fred Rogers. He always weirded me out when I was a kid—I was more interested in being entertained by The Electric Company and Sesame Street than by the guy with the sweater. Still, I watched a lot of his shows before and after my favorites and, in retrospect, I realize that Mr. Rogers taught me more about life and my fellow human beings than any of those other children’s programs. There was a warmth to the show, a warmth that made a bullied, antisocial kid such as me a little uncomfortable. Like Llyod in the film, I eventually lightened up.

I think this film will open doors in heads and hearts. It’s going to make Tom Hanks fans love him even more, even if that doesn’t seem possible. And it’s going to fortify precious memories of the sweet man who talked right to you from the TV screen, be it with his haggard puppets or through an everpresent smile.