Wonder: A wonderful film

Cast: Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Jacob Tremblay, Mandy Patinkin, Daveed Diggs

Rated: 8/10

Propelling the virtue of kindness in this fast growing unkind world was never so emotionally packed and yet full of positives as Wonder is.

Thanks not so much to established superstar Julia Roberts or the eternally sweet Owen Wilson but to the kid packed in believable prosthetics to, well, look like a deformed monster as his insensitive classmates call him, that makes you fall in with this Christmas-y family drama with a message.

Jacob Tremblay, or Auggie as we know him in the film, is born with a genetic flaw so intense that even after 29 surgeries of his face, he looks barely human. So, he hides behind his astronaut helmet and is completely traumatised when his mom forces him to attend school. Tremblay holds forth with such season histrionics that Auggie and his plight seeps into your heart and tear ducts.

At the same time, his quiet perseverance, resignation to his situation, his heartbreaks, his return to class every morning despite the barbs, his agony about losing the sole friend he has and his daily travails makes you believe in the essentiality of injecting kindness and compassion as a law into every human body.

The film explores relationships and situations at various levels, through various characters and their separate back stories. And that’s what makes this movie a gem in a sea of mediocrity, especially this week with the cinemas.

A must watch, must learn from gentle emotional film.