Yes No Maybe So: Jacob Tremblay is a "Wonder"
Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 5:00PM 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.
Reader Comments (23)
I just got teary eyed seeing the trailer. 100% watching this, tremblay is tremendously talented.
Please, I want Mean Girls the prequel!!!!
Sometimes we need films that would warm our hearts, The trailer does exactly that. I will see this one. I also don't mind Jacob's narration. He's still a kid and not everyone has seen Room.
I'm a die hard Julia fan,this looks like BO crowd pleaser.
I'm surprised this is getting an awards push. It seems more fitting as a summer release.
Glad to see Diggs, post-Hamilton.
No. Eew No. Leave the kids alone!
It seems too cute by a lot. Jacob Tremblay does not seem to overdo his part though, but the overall tone (based on the trailer) seems too designed to elicit tears.
Your description of the plot makes this sounds like the type of movie that will leave me an emotional mess, so I won't be watching this trailer, let alone the movie.
As for the super power I'd most want, that would be reading people's minds of course...although this could expose one to information you'd rather not know.
I got diabetes from this trailer. The cast is good, but it looks way too cute/self-aware.
Never knew I was this callous. Everything about this annoyed me. Will this actually help disfigured children? Will families with disfigured loved ones relate to any of this?
In my teenage years, I wanted to have mystique power. My dream was to transform myself in the likes of Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Jake Gylehal, Emma Stone, etc, and go on a fuck spree
3rtful - I thibk it does, the narrative doesnot seem to be when guided by an older white man/woman or under the influence of a white person who is not his real parents the kid found his path. This seems to more that that and I think it helps people realize that exteriors are not the actual person because I know a lot of people who do not approach someone who is a little different because they feel like it will always be an elephant in the room. I truly believe it helps some people cross that barrier.
I am a no. The sugar factor and his resemblance to a young Lena Dunham make this doubly disturbing.
Yessss. This is going to be a big BO success
This year's "Hidden Figures". I'm there.
(and my superpower would be time travel.)
It'd be fun and ironic if Tremblay gets his deserved Oscar nom for "Room", with this one. However, this a vibe that reminds me of "Pay it forward", the project tailor-made for earning Haley Joel Osment an Oscar and we all knew what the outcome was.
I believe Elisabeth Moss was born into Scientology, and from what I've read about Beck (also born into it), if you're born into it, you're subject to different rules, somehow.
Oh, I posted that at the wrong link, obviously.
^That's scary as fuck (and her being in "The Handmaiden's Tale" is making my brain think it's an indirect cry for help... LOL).
my superpower
would beis having the willpower not to watch sappy moviesTo /3rtfuls first sentence, We knew.
The only thing missing from this trailer is Solsbury Hill.
good post