'Wonder' REVIEW: Jacob Tremblay shines once again in this sweet, gentle and hopeful family d

'Wonder' is directed by Stephen Chbosky who previously directed and wrote Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). It's also based on the best-selling novel of the same name written by R.J Palacio. The film that stars Jacob Tremblay who in my opinion is really talented beyond his years with film Room (2015). That was my second favorite film that year and Jacob Tremblay was a huge part of why that film was as good as it was. With seeing the trailers to this film, I was excited to see what else can he bring to the table as an actor growing into maturity. After seeing this film, he once again proves he's an actor worth seeing even more in theaters.

The story of the film is about a young boy named August "Auggie" Pullman (played by Jacob Tremblay) who was born with multiple facial deformations and permanently looks different than everybody else. His mother Isabel Pullman (played by Julia Roberts) and his father Nate (played by Owen Wilson) finally encourage Auggie to get out from being home schooled and start middle school in the 5th grade. As you can tell from the premise of the film, he doesn't quite make any friends at all throughout his first day, but slowly starts to make a name for himself in a positive way over time.

I'll just get to what I loved about this film and that is the performances. Jacob Tremblay once again can act like hell. In this film he's really sympathetic and you root for him throughout the entire film especially through the make-up that's seamless throughout, but still feels like a regular boy you can relate to. Julia Roberts' and Owen Wilson's characters are extremely likable and you really feel close and relate extremely well with this family's dilemma. Auggie's sister Olivia "Via" Pullman (played by Izabela Vidovic) is also really likable and she also gave a really good performance in the film as well. The film's script expertly manages to flesh out and develop every single one of these characters and you understand where everybody comes from when they do or say certain things. I can relate to Auggie so much through his interests like Star Wars, Minecraft and wanting to go to outer space, but I can also relate to the idea of how difficult it can be make friends with the deformity that he has even though I don't have any deformities myself. The other kids that are portrayed in this film I'd say is near-perfect accuracy. With almost every kid in this film, I could pick out who this character reminds me of the most to a person in real life and I thought this film did it perfectly correct. This is definitely a film that I think is really important for families with really small kids to watch. This is a film that's basically the ugly duckling story, but has its message in reverse in a good way. It's a film that teaches children to treat everyone equally no matter what they look like and this film will educate them quite effectively.

Issues that I have with the film is that sometimes shift the focus onto other characters throughout the film. I do think that it is an interesting way of telling this story from different points of view, but with one particular character I found that it was pretty unnecessary. This character would say a paragraph worth of narration then followed by a couple of scenes and cuts straight back to Auggie again. It seemed pointless and her part should have been scrapped all together. I get that it's to show how Auggie has affected the life of this character, but the character was too distant from the family to leave such impact. The film is also predictable, but the characters are strong here that you don't mind it.

Overall, this film is wonderfully acted, refreshingly sweet and will probably tug on your heartstrings quite a bit. I would say that Jacob Tremblay has another good chance at the Oscars and I hope to see him in more films. The script could've shaved off that one character, but I'm still glad that it's a script that develops its characters greatly.

'Wonder' gets an A