by Nathaniel R
From a distance the forthcoming film Wonder (2017) looks like Mask (1985) for the junior high set. The film is based on the novel of the same name by RJ Palacio about Auggie, a boy who enters school after years of home schooling due to his many surgeries and complications with a rare facial deformity. Jacob Tremblay, in demand post Room, plays the main character Auggie. The film is directed by Stephen Chbosky who already has some experience with transferring YA novels to the screen since he transferred his own for his directorial debut The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012). Wonder is his sophomore effort though this time he left the screenwriting to another. Steven Conrad, who previously adapted The Pursuit of Happyness and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to screen, adapts.
Let's compartmentalize the first trailer with our Yes No Maybe So™ system after the jump...
YES...
- "Dear god, please let them be nice to him." Whatever the potential for overt sentiment here, this premise and opening trailer scene has kind of an irresistible tug on heartstrings. What person ever hasn't wished this for a loved one going into any kind of new communal situation be it first day of school, new job, new town after a move, or what have you.
- I buy Owen Wilson as a dad who thinks of himself as a "cool dad," don't you?
- Daveed Diggs and Mandy Patinkin as faculty!
- We already know that Jacob Tremblay is a great child actor but his two main friends here look promising as well.
- The superpower conversation is great and legit kid like. (As a kid my answer to this question was nearly always teleportation or flight so I guess I had somewhere I wanted to get... you?)
NO...
- The sap. My eyes feel sticky just watching it
- Oh god he narrates like he did in Room. Narration is soooo hard to pull off (as well as being a usually lazy screenplay tool). In Room it made organic sense with the sealed off material. Here though...
- The jokeyness, especially that last stinger joke "it takes a lot of plastic surgery to look this good" feels a little forced and maybe a little early in life for self-deprecating zingers. That worked in Mask but the character was also a teenager with a fierce trash-talking mom. It seems unlikely that the parents would here would have inspired that kind of sassiness.
MAYBE SO...
she wants nice friends for a change!
- Mean Girls the Prequel? Heh. All school films are required to have them. But will they pull off the divide of jerk classmates and friendly ones with believable nuance or will it just be good vs evil?
- It's possible that the relentlessly cheerful tone of the traileris just a mask (no pun intended) for a movie that's more honest about the difficulties of growing up different. For instance that conversation with the mother "you have to say that" has the potential to sting. But then again... the mask looks pretty convincing that this is fresh out of the tree sap with no nuancing filter.
- Talented cast and promising director, so it might be worth seeing even if it isn't any great shakes as a family film?
P.S.
They serve salad in school now? Perhaps there's hope for public education yet!
Based on the evidence here are you a Yes, No or Maybe So when this hits theaters on November 17th? I'm leaning No but I want to be a Maybe So.