It’s been a while since there’s been a good rainy day movie. You know what I’m talking about. You get home from a tough day at work or school, where everyone’s breathing down your neck. You get home, and there’s less refuge there for one reason or another. So you just turn on the TV or go to a movie to get out for a bit, and the movie you watch just warms the soul, if only for a minute. Wonder is that movie, here to welcome you like a hug from a loved one.
On paper, the Pullman family is another perfect little family living in Park Slope New York. There’s loving parents Nate (Owen Wilson) and Isabel (Julia Roberts). There’s a great older daughter Via (Izabela Vidovic). And the youngest Auggie (Jacob Tremblay) is smart and funny and sweet…and he has a severe facial deformity. After being home schooled until 5th grade, Auggie is then sent to middle school run by Principal Tushman (Mandy Patinkin). Wonder then navigates us through this tumultuous year in the Pullman family’s life.
The first half of Wonder is as the title suggests. Having seen the trailer somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 times, I was pretty sure this movie was gonna be a story about a kid with a weird face being bullied by vicious kids and the nice characters saying “Being mean is bad.” But Wonder actually thinks about how this scenario would unfold in the real world. Auggie isn’t really met with too much outward criticism other than Julian (Bryce Gheisar), whom Auggie can handle. What’s tough for him are the constant stares and look aways; people who are fascinated but scared to talk directly to him. Then there’s Jack Will (Noah Jupe); Jack likes Auggie but faces peer pressure constantly to denegrade the “weird-faced kid” from his “friends.” The story also focuses on how Auggie’s problems affect the rest of the family. Isabel restarts her thesis in fits and starts, trying to pick up from a past life but terrified to neglect her kids. Poor Via loses her best friend Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell) to a new school clique, but because she isn’t Auggie, she is forced to deal with it on her own, and any time the parents try to help, something comes up with Auggie that requires more immediate attention. The space theme helps reinforce how Auggie’s issues are everybody’s, meaning they have to deal with additional problems on top of their own, a clever observation. That being said, none of these issues are melodramatically covered, the frustrations build slowly, leading to justifiable lash outs from different family members to one another, making it easy for the audience to understand these characters and connect with them.
That type of understated balancing act with this material was never going to carry over into the third act, it’s too hard. I think that Wonder tried too hard to explain away some of the character’s behavior; well-intentioned, but as a result the story wastes too much time on peripheral characters when it could continue to develop the strong family at the center of the story (like for example, telling us what Owen Wilson does). The end goes for your smiles and tears with standing ovations, weird character choices (really? you’re not gonna suspend the kid who punched someone more than the subtle bullier?), and just awful characters (Julian’s parents) to justify awful behavior, which should work, but feels more tacked on. Wonder had build up enough good will for me to just shrug it off and go along with their manipulation, but my eyes were at least half rolling for parts of the ending.
Wonder is Thanksgiving dinner. After the cold weather settles in, and the tests/year end results are bearing down on you. Sometimes a meal of turkey, potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream with family is what you need to feel better. I don’t know which characters are which, but I know Jacob Tremblay meeting Chewbacca was the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.