It's Roberts who dazzles. Putting her in scenes with a child who picks up on the slightest flicker of insincerity is the kind of challenge she was born for -- it's acting crack.
Starring a terrific Jacob Tremblay as a bullied boy with facial deformities and Julia Roberts as his mom, this drama based on the R. J. Palacio book that nearly everyone has read and wept over has surprising dimension and delicacy.
Maybe this little movie about a kid with a facial disorder isn't really about a kid with a facial disorder at all, but about whatever you and I choose to see in it. And if that's not art, I don't know what is.
It is unashamedly sentimental, old-fashioned and bursting to the seams with Important Life Lessons. But it's very well put-together, indeed; a smart, effective and, occasionally, funny film that surprises at every turn.
