WONDER

I enjoyed the film. The showing was full of families. The kid actors were fine and Tremblay excellent. I also liked Roberts in it and she has one moment with her trademark laugh. Owen Wilson was good and the daughter as well. It does have some teary moments and oh when the dog goes...almost couldn't contain myself but luckily they did not have the family all at the vet too. Jeez. Overall, I was happy with this and enjoyed it.

Grade - B

Yeah I enjoyed it a lot. All kids should see it. The only part that made me get teary eyed was when the dog died and Auggie says she was always there for him when he got home from the hospital and she was his best friend.

I'm glad it's such a big hit. Well deserved. Very nice film.

8/10 (B+)

Saw this with expectations of a typical feel-good family drama, but it was more than just a pleasant little film. And quite a bit of humour to it too. Roberts and Wilson are good in their parental roles, the actresses portraying Via and Madison add a lot of (unexpected) substance to supporting roles, and of course Tremblay is wonderful as Auggie. So much of the emotion and pain in his role in Room come from his deeply expressive face, so under prosthetics, he's more or less restricted to his sad eyes and innocent-yet-world-weary voice.

If I were to delve deeper into the interconnecting stories of this extended family, I'd be able to pick apart so many things. Maybe the renewal of Auggie's friendship with Jack Will comes a little too swiftly. Maybe in the real world, good friends can drift apart, and Madison and Via wouldn't reconnect so seamlessly. Maybe the overall message of "We all have our own life scars and struggles" is a little too simple. But it's done so well you just drop these things and enjoy the story.

If this doesn't score big over Christmas and get into the high 100s for total domestic gross, I'd be shocked. It'll survive the onslaught of the holiday releases as a more-than-able family alternative.

Grade: B+

This was delightful. Really moving and well-acted. Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay in particular were great. A-

I loved it. Great characters and story. I liked the changing character perspective format, especially when each switch would reveal something interesting you wondered about in the last segment. And I was so happy to see Jack beat the shit out of that Julian kid. Fuck that kid. It was probably the best middle school movie I’ve ever seen, which isn’t saying much but still.

A

A feel good family movie with expected twists and turns along with good amount of tearing moments. Tremblay is great and so is Roberts (though I would have liked more of her in this movie, specially after school conversations were entirely missing). Wilson and other supporting cast were good here as well.

7/10

Wonder

It's a pretty good film. Obviously it's made with one intention. It's touching at times, funny, and generally a nice and easy watch. Screenwriters will never be able to write teenagers well, but I think they did better with the younger ones than in most things, but besides Tremblay those kiddie actors were pretty bad. The film is a bit too perfect. A bit goofy too. Like, did he really have to win the Breecher Award? It was the least surprising thing in the film -- in my experience, boys like this at school were always being given the sympathy vote, for basically doing nothing but being disabled. But anyway, everything seemed a bit too jolly and joyous and, dare I say it ... easy, and thus fake. And the film is just so over-the-top and in-your-face with the idyllic American way of life.

But the film has a special quality. Perhaps because I have a son now, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Ok, granted I only saw it an hour ago, but it has had an effect. Overall I enjoyed this. I wish there were more Owen Wilson dad jokes, but we can't have it all.

B

I was surprised this didn't pull a Jumanji or Greatest Showman and show much better numbers through Christmas. The competition, I suppose. $130M is still fantastic though. Well deserved for an enjoyable family film.

It's easily the worst scene in an otherwise damn good movie. The dog pretty much exists just to die. We never see them play together or do anything together. The dog never leaves it's bed (granted its sick, but they easily could've thrown in a shot of Auggie playing with the dog during that Christmas flashback). All we get are a couple of shots of the dog's making cute faces, a couple of scenes where it makes funny noises in the background, and then it dies. It's emotional manipulation at its worst, which is odd considering how good the rest of the film is.

A-

This isn't a complaint and not a knock against the film or the book, because it's a movie/book for children, but it would've been interesting if the bully's parents (just the Mom really) weren't so blatantly evil and the bully was just a little sociopath. But you know, no grey areas. We have to have the bully actually be a good guy and have a shot of him standing and clapping at the end for Auggie.