Review: 'Wonder' is a heart-warming movie without the mush

After the success of his young adult film The Perks of Being a Wallflower, writer/director Stephen Chbosky has produced another charming, sweet and slightly sentimental offering for children and their parents in Wonder.

Based on a tear-jerking New York Times bestseller, starring Julia Roberts and everyone's favourite offbeat cool dad Owen Wilson, it's a film with a message we can all relate to and enough heart-warming inspiration to make many reach for a tissue or two.

Our hero is young Auggie (Jacob Tremblay - familiar to viewers from his performance in Room) who suffers from a facial deformity and has been protected by his parents Isabel (Roberts), Nate (Wilson) and his sister Via (Izabela Vidovic) but must now venture into the scary world of middle school.

It turns out that while the first couple of days are rough for Auggie, his family is far more nervous and anxious than they need to be because Auggie has far more resilience and humorous coping mechanisms than they imagined.

A science wizard and Star Wars nut who when we meet him uses an astronaut helmet as a barrier between his face and the world, Auggie is soon looking into the eyes, touching the hearts and changing the minds of everyone around him - from his benevolent principal Mr Tushman (an unusually well-behaved Mandy Patinkin) to his hipster home-room teacher Mr Browne (Daveed Diggs).

WATCH | The trailer for Wonder

Those who bully and disappoint him are quietly ignored until they realise that it's up to them to change their attitudes and realise that it costs very little to choose kindness over judgment.

Chbosky has an empathetic touch that manages to steer the film away from too much mushy sentimentality.

• This article was originally published in The Times