Family drama ‘Wonder’ bursting with optimism and grace

Many movies can make you laugh, some can make you smile and a few can make you cry — but “Wonder,” a moving and upbeat story of how one child’s optimism radiates through his family and friends, does the amazing trick of making an audience do all three.

Based on R.J. Palacio’s young-adult best-seller, “Wonder” tells of August Pullman (Jacob Tremblay), aka Auggie, who at age 10 is entering the fifth grade in a normal New York prep school after years of homeschooling with his mom, Isabel (Julia Roberts). The reason Auggie has been kept at home is that he was born with craniofacial deformities, and in his first 10 years has had 27 surgeries to allow him to breathe, see and hear without a hearing aid.

Auggie is nervous about school, so much so that his dad, Nate (Owen Wilson), has to talk him out of wearing his space helmet on the first day. But if Auggie is petrified, so is Isabel. “Dear God, please make them be nice to him,” she says as Auggie walks into school alone for the first time.

Director Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”), who co-wrote the script with Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne, follows Auggie through his entire fifth-grade year, using holidays and school events as landmarks along the way. During this year, we see Auggie welcomed by the school’s principal, Mr. Tushman (Mandy Patinkin), and his teacher, Mr. Browne (“Hamilton’s” Daveed Diggs), and befriended first by classmate Jack Will (Noah Jupe) and bullied by snobby Julian (Bryce Gheisar).

But “Wonder” digs deeper when it shows the effects Auggie’s medical troubles have had on those around him. Hardest hit is Auggie’s older sister, Olivia (“The Fosters’” Isabel Vidovic), who goes by Via, who is starting high school by losing her best friend, Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell), and venturing into an audition for the drama club’s production of “Our Town” — events Isabel and Nate barely notice in the whirlwind of Auggie’s issues.

Chbosky gets to the heart of Auggie’s and Via’s struggles in their new school situations, gently but movingly capturing the preteen and teen heartbreaks and victories both face in their new situations. The movie also finds room to show Isabel and Nate adjusting to the new normal of their family’s lives.

Roberts has rarely been better, caring and tender and fiercely maternal. Vidovic is a charming find, showing sincerity and grit as Via navigates the thrills and disappointments of near-adulthood. And Tremblay, so good in “Room,” shows he’s no fluke, but a thoughtful and emotionally dynamic young actor — even under a bunch of prosthetic makeup.

In scene after scene in “Wonder,” a lesser filmmaker would have given in to the natural sentimentality and come up with something treacly and false. But Chbosky shows a lightness of touch that allows Auggie’s emergence and Via’s blossoming to unfold gracefully and beautifully.