Wonder (2017)

Wonder (2017)

IMDB Rating : 8.1/10 ( as on 23.12.2017)

PG | 1h 53min | Drama, Family

Based on the New York Times bestseller, WONDER tells the incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.

Director: Stephen Chbosky

Writers: Stephen Chbosky (screenplay by), Steve Conrad (screenplay by) (as Steven Conrad)

Stars: Jacob Tremblay, Owen Wilson, Izabela Vidovic ,Julia Roberts

 IMDB link Here

Movie Rating ★★★★☆  

 An open-hearted message movie you can't help but embrace

Tim Robey,

“If you need to send a message, call Western Union!” the mogul Sam Goldwyn is meant to have declared, which hasn’t stopped Hollywood finding a million ways to teach us lessons then and since. Wonder was a children’s novel – a widely-read, unashamedly messagey heartbreaker by RJ Palacio – and to approach it as grown-up cinema wouldn’t help anyone.

The only way forward is to abandon cynicism at the door: that’s what the director Stephen Chbosky has done, in movie-izing this story about physical deformity and the playground as a last refuge for knee-jerk cruelty.

The main character is Auggie (Jacob Tremblay), a 10-year-old born with a rare genetic condition that makes him look different – not Elephant Man different, or as gigantically so as Eric Stoltz’s character in the 1985 weepie Mask, but different enough. Until the point when the film begins, he’s been entirely home-schooled by his parents (Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts), and seeks refuge from staring eyes within an astronaut’s helmet.

Chbosky mostly preserves the book’s device of multiple narrators, moving from character to character, including that of Auggie’s older sister Via (the excellent Izabela Vidovic), whose quiet neglect amid all the dramas surrounding her brother gives the film its most bittersweet counterpoint.

There’s one difference in the adaptation: Auggie’s chief tormentor, a trust-fund kid called Julian (Bryce Gheisar), is no longer given a distinct point of view. He’s intrusive enough even in Auggie’s part of the story, and that of Jack Will (Noah Jupe), the kid who tries hardest to befriend Auggie, but whose open-heartedness has its limits.

Reaching for the “mawkishness” stamp is easy enough for any adult viewer here – too easy, as a defence mechanism against the film’s earnest feeling and irreproachable message about choosing to be kind. OK, the script strong-arms us into surrender here and there, but more often it gently takes an elbow, exactly as Chbosky did in his previous feature, 2012’s soulful and compassion-filled coming-of-age drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

 Just as there, he’s got all the right performances rallying to his cause, headed straight up by Tremblay, who comes good on his hard-to-forget breakthrough in the Oscar-winning drama Room, and lets us all file away the hideous flop The Book of Henry as a different type of lesson learnt. It’s important that he’s unrecognisable under these skilful prosthetics, but his voice is not, and its high, quavering vulnerability has real character without needing to beg for our sympathies.

Wilson and Roberts are not only affecting on their own but opposite one another – they’re one of the more believable couples in recent American films, with his laissez-faire, you’re-the-boss manner and her emotional forthrightness see-sawing really well. The anxiety of these parents plays out as poignantly as their eventual pride.

Already a significant sleeper hit in the US, the film breaks Goldwyn’s rule into pieces, insisting on the educational value any mainstream portrait of impairment is bound to have, and inviting us all, kindly, to drop our guard.

 Read complete review at Telegraph

Movie Rating ★★☆☆☆  

Manipulative feelgood drama comes with hefty dollop of treacle

Peter Bradshaw

There’s a treacliness to this manipulative movie – more heartsinker than heartwarmer – about Auggie, a 10-year-old kid with a rare facial disfigurement, played in prosthetic makeup by Jacob Tremblay.

He’s been taught at home by his concerned and caring parents, played by Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, while successive surgeries partly improved his condition. But this brave boy must now start school, and face down the bullying and staring, without the toy astronaut helmet that he has, until now, always worn outside. Meanwhile, Auggie’s older teen sister Via (Izabela Vidovic) has issues of her own: she is angry and conflicted about her parents neglecting her needs in favour of Auggie’s.

The movie appears very well intentioned, but those good intentions may be as fabricated as everything else here. Certainly Wilson’s performance is horribly fake, phoning it in with the same old halting drawl. He looked a lot more emotionally engaged with his labrador in Marley & Me than he does with any human being here. And Roberts keeps doing her dying-down-to-a-whisper voice at moments of emotional suffering.

Auggie’s face is undoubtedly shocking at first, though far less challenging than Rocky’s face in Peter Bogdanovich’s comparable 1985 film Mask. And as Auggie is a 10-year-old rather than a teenager, some harder and more adult questions about what his condition means for his emotional life need never be asked. This movie is based on the bestselling 2012 novel by RJ Palacio, although tellingly that book was avowedly based on the author’s experience of seeing a girl with a facial disfigurement. By switching the gender, in a film about the importance of looks, the stakes are marginally but distinctly lowered.

It might have been better as a longform TV drama, like a cross between My So-Called Life and The Wonder Years, and the soapy nature of the story is at first reasonably promising. When Auggie first shows up at school, he is greeted by the kindly, wise, bearded principal (Mandy Patinkin) who has ordered a handpicked group of pupils to show him around. One is Jack, played by Noah Jupe, and another is Julian (Bryce Gheisar). Jack sees past what Auggie looks like and they become friends, though their relationship is not without its trials.

Julian’s job is to be the obviously nasty, sneery bully without whom this story cannot function: the tiny Flashman underlines everyone else’s good faith. It becomes clear, however, that despite the principal having a zero-tolerance attitude towards bullying, the film has a zero-tolerance attitude towards being judgmental: it is soon implied that Julian’s behaviour is actually the fault of his smarmy parents. We finally get a glimpse of Julian, smilingly happy and forgiven, as he joins in with the general acclaim for Auggie’s courage.

As for Via, her best friend Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell) has returned to school from her summer break with a trendy new hairstyle and has apparently dropped her as a friend. Her only ally and confidante was her late grandmother, played in cameo by Sônia Braga, last seen as the music critic in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film Aquarius. Confused and hurt, Via throws herself into trying out for the school play, where an impossibly cute, hip, sensitive, glasses-wearing boy called Justin (Nadji Jeter) instantly falls for her – her trials are not so bad.

 All of these characters, or nearly all of them, are given backstories, heralded by their names in intertitles, sympathetically letting us in to their private lives. (Not Julian though: he gets to be the bully, and that’s it.) But there are no real ironies or complexities and Miranda’s secret emotional journey is outrageously unlikely. It is a film with all the depth of a fridge magnet.

 Read complete review at The Guardian

Movie Rating ★★★☆☆  

 Julia Roberts, Jacob Tremblay show the importance of being kind, empathetic

Rick Bentley

Wonder" is the kind of movie that should be shown to young and old as a life lesson about how to deal with people who appear to be different. It has a wonderful message about tolerance, acceptance, understanding and respect. There's no guarantee the message would register with all moviegoers, but social ignorance can be cured one person at a time.

Too often films that offer such lofty visions are presented in a demanding way. "Wonder" is not one of those movies. Director Stephen Chbosky ("The Perks of Being a Wallflower") manages to make some very important points while not sacrificing the entertainment elements. He does this through a script lovingly based on the best-selling book by R.J. Palacio and a cast that can deliver emotional moments without being melodramatic.

Taking on a role that requires so much prosthetics work can be a challenge even to the most seasoned actor. Jacob plays the role of Auggie with such a natural ease that it is easy to forget this is an actor under hours of makeup work. The performance feels real because Jacob gets across the frustration, pain and happiness that a youngster would have in this kind of situation no matter their medical history. He's not playing Auggie as being different, just as a youngster trying to deal with the scariness of life. Because he makes the performance work in that manner, the movie can be appreciated simply as a sweet tale of a very complicated youth.

If "Wonder" — both the book and the film versions — had only been about the impact a young boy with facial deformities has on the people around him, it would have been an enjoyable tale. But, there's so much more to the story and movie as it offers a broader look at what it's like to being different.

It's obvious the central character of Auggie (Jacob Tremblay) has to deal with the cruel way people react to those who look dramatically different. But it becomes clear that the pain of feeling like you don't belong, the need for some form of validation and the struggle to deal with the hardships even when they aren't apparent, is something that more than one little boy with medical problems has to face.

Overlooking Vidovic's performance as Auggie's sister, Via, would be easy because Auggie's character is such a tent pole for the tale. Vidovic's work softy reveals she's also dealing with major problems. It's equally as interesting to watch her navigate through the pains and pauses of life as it is seeing Auggie's growth.

All the family and friends stories go together to make "Wonder" more than just a feel-good story. It is a reminder that everyone must deal with their own demons, even if they aren't obvious ones. How we help and treat each other is what defines the humanity in the world

Read  complete review at Chicago Tribune

Sheri Linden

Based on a children's novel that sparked a "Choose Kind" movement — "kind" as in "kindness," or what the world needs now — Wonder brings an upbeat openheartedness to tough questions. Its lessons in compassion and self-acceptance are treacle-free, and however movie-shiny the story's world of economic comfort and prep school, those lessons pack a universal punch.

If they're also sometimes driven home with a borderline-corny obviousness, that's because this screen version of R. J. Palacio's popular book is a truly kid-centric drama, speaking directly to kids, not around them, while exploring their points of view. Writer-director Stephen Chbosky, who previously adapted his coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the screen, has a feel for the turning points that shape the tween and teen years — turning points that are, in this case, heightened by exceptional circumstances.

Tracing a milestone year in the life of a boy who was born with craniofacial differences, Wonder has an obvious antecedent in Peter Bogdanovich's deft 1985 feature Mask, but this is a decidedly less gritty, solidly middle-school tale. With his co-screenwriters, Steven Conrad and Jack Thorne, Chbosky aims above all to inspire, and he has harnessed the considerable star power of his three leads to do just that, with humor and heart. As a serious live-action film for kids, it's a rare commodity, destined to connect with family audiences over the year-end holidays.

The narrative is divided into chapters, each dedicated to the perspective of one of the young characters, and sometimes doubles back on events, lending new facets and dimension. First up is Auggie, who enters the fifth-grade fray with the slouch of someone who'd rather not face other people's discomfort. His older sister, Via (sensitively played by Izabela Vidovic), gets a chapter, as do her former best friend, Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell), and Auggie's new school buddy Jack (Noah Jupe), a genial scholarship student with an unsteady sense of loyalty. With commendable concision and insight, the film sympathetically reveals the challenges they each face on the home front. Even the villainous Julian gets a redemptive aha moment.

There's a particular poignancy to the story of Via, the sibling unavoidably sidelined by the constant state of emergency in Auggie's first years. Sonia Braga's flashback cameo as Via's grandmother underscores not just a bond that sustained the girl but the basic need to be seen — a need that's awfully complicated for Auggie. While her brother reluctantly doffs his astronaut's helmet and learns to navigate a public sphere amid taunts and stares, Via embarks on her momentous first year of high school. Heartbroken over the rift with Miranda, she discovers first love with a self-declared theater nerd (Nadji Jeter) and her own flair for theater, claiming the spotlight for the first time in years.

Via and Auggie's parents are supporting characters in the best sense, with Roberts and Wilson bringing effortless warmth, signature touches and well-etched detail to understated roles. Roberts conveys Isabel's love, strength and twinges of maternal anxiety, as well as the mild case of empty nest syndrome that strikes after she nudges her boy out into the world. Wilson's comic relief is perfectly pitched, a smooth deflection of paternal worry. Beyond his childlike streak, Nate is an unconventional type whose executive-suite suits are more a badge of familial devotion than a reflection of his deepest self.

Within the film's bright, sanitized rendition of New York (a Times Square New Year's Eve never looked so uncrowded), Chbosky interweaves Auggie's fanboy fantasies of NASA and Star Wars, sequences whose cosmic whimsy serves to deepen the down-to-earth vibe. Though the drama is firmly grounded, its grasp of nuance comes and goes. Yet even at its clumsiest, a climactic lesson in anti-bullying and forgiveness, the adventure-story earnestness feels apt for grade-school-age moviegoers.

Through it all, Tremblay gives full-blooded life to Auggie's emotional roller coaster of breakthroughs and betrayals, his posture and energy shifting expressively; he's transformed, not hidden, by the prosthetic makeup (designed by Arjen Tuiten, whose credits include Pan's Labyrinth and Maleficent).

Whether Auggie is declaring his understandable enthusiasm for Halloween, making sharp observations about his schoolmates or demanding answers to some of life's knottiest questions, the sweetness of the young actor's voice heightens the sense of optimism and vulnerability. Wonder is a story of connection, not suffering. Dramatizing one boy's effect on the people around him, it invites the viewer into that fold.

 Read complete review at Hollywood reporter

Movie Rating ★★★☆☆  

 Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson star in film that holds few surprises

Sandra Hall

Wonder tells the inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences, as he attends a mainstream elementary school for the first time.

Hollywood feels the same way, so Wonder, the story of a 10 year old born with facial defects which still affect his appearance after 27 surgeries sounds like a highly risky prospect.

Nonetheless, it's backed up with a pretty solid insurance policy. Adapted from a best-selling novel by American writer R.J. Pallacio, it's directed by Stephen Chbosky, who's responsible for a gently perceptive screen translation of his own coming-of-age novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and the cast is headed by Julia Roberts, out to disarm with the spontaneity has lifted many a movie out of the doldrums. She's paired with Owen Wilson, who's deploying his slow delivery and downbeat comic style to similar effect. It's hard to imagine melodrama and Owen Wilson occupying the same sentence. And finally, the boy at the centre of the story is played by Jacob Tremblay, who's no stranger to tricky subjects after his role opposite Oscar winner Brie Larson in Room (2015).

Co-written by Chbosky, the screenplay is draped around a well-worn framework. At 10, Auggie Pullman is about to go to school for the first time, having been home-schooled by his mother, Isabel (Roberts). From snatches of voice-over narrative, we already know the he's bright, funny, charming and good-natured – the film is taking no chances here – and he wants to go but he's understandably terrified. The headmaster (Mandy Patinkin at his least unsettling) knows how he feels and he has enlisted a small group of classmates to show him around and put him at ease. His judgment however, is a little off and Julian (Bryce Gheiser), the most outgoing of them, turns out to be a smarmy bully who's delighted to have fresh prey. Auggie finds himself having to run the gauntlet of the school's lunch-time crowd every day before settling at a table on his own. Then his luck changes. Jack (Noah Jupe), another of his classroom guides, dares the disapproval of the rest and joins him. To his great astonishment, Auggie starts to have fun.

The plot that follows holds few surprises. Friends fall out, there are betrayals, misunderstandings, paybacks and reconciliations. Auggie is hurt but recovers and the old lesson about the folly of judging people by appearances is hammered home once more. The skill lies in the way these cliches are reinvigorated. It starts with the writing which fleshes out the formula by giving all the characters their due. Chbosky even challenges one of the basic rules in the screenwriters' manual by successfully executing several switches in point-of-view, complete with voice-over. Not only do we get Auggie's story, we hear from Jack, Isabel and Auggie's teenage sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), whose love for her brother can't quite cancel out her sadness at the fact that his troubles command all her parents' attention. It's the kind of part which invites a surfeit of self-pity but it's written with great care and realised even more deftly by Vidovic who tempers its poignancy with a stoic matter-of-factness.

Nonetheless, Hollywood rules in the end and it's very much a soft-focus view of a family under stress. They live in an elegant brownstone and Nate's well-paid job involves so little overtime that he's usually around to counsel and console Auggie when he's at his lowest.

And towards the denouement, Chbosky abandons all thoughts of restraint and heads for the big, mawkish Hollywood finish. You wish he wouldn't but you knew he would. And yet Auggie and his predicament still hit home. In the age of the selfie, how could they not?

 Read complete review at Sydney Morning Herald