Won­der

The poster for Won­der sees a young boy wear­ing an astronaut’s hel­met – but don’t wor­ry this isn’t anoth­er film about space explo­ration. Judg­ing by Stephen Chbosky’s pre­vi­ous­ly works, includ­ing YA com­e­dy-dra­ma The Perks of Being a Wall­flower, it seems that he is yet again try­ing to save the Justin Bieber gen­er­a­tion from them­selves – all through the pow­er of kind­ness. His new film, based on the nov­el by RJ Pala­cio, is no dif­fer­ent. This relent­less­ly heart­warm­ing fam­i­ly dra­ma tells the sto­ry of August ​“Aug­gie” Pull­man (Jacob Trem­blay of Room fame), a young boy with a severe facial defor­mi­ty. The film fol­lows this pre­co­cious scamp as he starts fifth grade hav­ing been home-schooled his entire life, and must face being dif­fer­ent in front of the cru­elest audi­ence of all – his new classmates.

Aug­gie is the ​‘son around which his fam­i­ly orbit.’ He is the film’s focus, but the sto­ry is neat­ly bro­ken into seg­ments which exam­ine the impact he, and his strug­gle with his appear­ance, has on those around him. Every char­ac­ter, whether it’s his kind­ly sis­ter Via (Izabela Vidovic) or best friend Jack (Noah Jupe), seems to be deal­ing with their own strug­gles, and is taught the impor­tance of com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing through the strug­gles of anoth­er. As he faces the jibes of his class­mates and his sis­ter strug­gles through High School, it becomes clear that kind­ness will always come out on top. Chbosky is intent on try­ing to teach the audi­ence this les­son, and it’s repeat­ed through­out. And although pos­i­tive, it quick­ly feels over­done and, at times, way too saccharine.

Despite its mes­sage, the film a few fun­ny episodes. The cast­ing of Owen Wil­son as Auggie’s ​‘cool dad,’ is par­tic­u­lar­ly tact­ful – he wears train­ers with his suit and offers lots of sil­ly morsels of advice. Auggie’s moth­er (Julia Roberts) coun­ter­bal­ances the lols, play­ing the frayed fam­i­ly head who has giv­en up all of her own inter­ests to look after her son. 

Togeth­er they present the hard­ships and rewards that come with hav­ing a child who is dif­fer­ent. The pep­per­ing of real time action, with snip­pets of Auggie’s over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion, is a charm­ing touch. We expe­ri­ence life from his per­spec­tive, with poten­tial­ly scary moments made fun. There are unex­pect­ed appear­ances from a bounc­ing astro­naut and even Chew­bac­ca, who are there to guide him. It sug­gests that fan­ta­sy is used as cop­ing mech­a­nism by children.

And it is the chil­dren who are the stars of this film. Trem­blay nim­bly bal­ances the emo­tion­al impact of Auggie’s dis­fig­ure­ment with an unwa­ver­ing­ly cheery atti­tude. And Elle McK­in­non is very fun­ny as class­mate Char­lotte – the goody goody child star in the mak­ing, who nev­er stops bang­ing on about that ad or TV show she was in. These round­ed sup­port­ing play­ers are what hold the piece togeth­er, bring­ing both lev­i­ty and weight to the sub­ject matter.