'WONDER'.........CANDY COATED MIDDLE SCHOOL.......

Wonder (2017)   Every so often, a Facebook pal we grew up with posts an archival photo of our old junior high school.........an ancient forbidding fortress reeking of bad memories......

           That's when we'd usually chime in with a comment along the lines of ......"nothing wrong with this place a Tomahawk missile couldn't cure...."   (Before anyone gets upset, we referred to only the unoccupied building....)

             Mainstream Hollywood chooses to sand off the edges of Middle School, polish it up to a high gloss, include a few laughs, make it a less bitter pill for moviegoers to swallow.......

            So the school on view here, like the one in the "Wimpy Kid" movies, is fundamentally a bright cheerful place, only slightly smeared by a bully or two......

            .........in other words, nothing at all like the horrific rat's nest of hatred, cruelty and vile behavior that infected our middle school.....

                We can't imagine what the kids in our junior high would have done with this movie's Auggie Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) a sweet, sensitive and brilliant boy with a facial disfigurement......probably torment him into suicide within 2 to 3 days......

                But "Wonder" isn't real life and we didn't mind that too much........at this point in our life we'd rather sit and be comforted by a fantasy Middle School where friendship and kindness prevail, bullying receives due justice and virtue is rewarded (just like in "The Wizard Of Oz") with a medal to wear around your neck.

               This movie school even has its very own Dumbledore in Principal Tushman (Mandy Patinkin), a character so wise and gentle, it's a wonder he doesn't ride in on a cloud. (Our Junior High principal and teachers were far closer to Voldemort and Delores Umbridge.....)

                And in telling its story, this movie also lays out a full menu of heartbreak and angst that you could easily divide up into four or five separate movies.......take your pick: disfigured child angst, teenage girl angst, school play angst, parental sacrifice angst. 

              "Wonder" certainly gives you your money's worth. 

               To his great credit, screenwriter-director Stephen Chbosky nimbly hops around from one emotional crisis to the next and never resorts to blatant pandering for an audience response. In its quietest moments, the film earns its tears honestly.........(We defy anyone to sit unmoved by a brief but telling climactic father-son conversation between Tremblay and Owen Wilson....)

               So we'll hold off hurling our Tomahawk missile at this particular school depicted in "Wonder"........it sits, after all,  in the middle of a movie that does a superior job of creating the kind of world we'd like to experience...(at least once and a while).  Sadly, a world that's rarely encountered outside of movies.  4 stars (****),