Wonder

2017 drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Young Auggie, a kid with facial deformity, attends school for the first time at the start of his fifth grade year.

Maybe it's a minor quibble, but I'm disappointed that some guy named Michael Alan Healy plays Chewbacca in this. Peter Mayhew wasn't available?

I just looked up Michael Alan Healy. He's got seven acting credits, and they're all for playing Chewbacca. In 2000, he was Chewbacca in some AFI tribute to Harrison Ford. Since then, he's been Chewbacca on four different late night shows (Letterman, Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel) and on a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards show.

So I don't know what's going on with Chewbacca anymore.

This movie is completely harmless. It deals with the idea of bullying in movie-ish ways, and gives Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson something to do even though they could have filled those roles with people who aren't stars. Actually, I'm taking that back. Nobody can take Owen Wilson's spot here, but I'm not going to say why. It's the kind of school experience that really only exists in movies, too. I did like the kids and thought that Jacob Tremblay did a really good job. You really do fall in love with little Auggie from the start even if you feel like you were manipulated into doing so.

There are some nice moments throughout, and the movie's got a theme that seems especially important in this terrible calendar year, but there's also a lot of fluff or sprawl and some subplots that take up too much space. As a whole, it has trouble finding a consistent tone and is too color-by-numbers to be anything more than a big-budget after-school special.

This book it's based on is all the rage. I've skimmed parts of it but not enough to know if it shares the same structure the movie has. This isn't 100% about Auggie, and that surprised me a little bit.