After spending most of his young life in home schooling, a boy (Jacob Tremblay) with severe facial deformities adjusts to life in middle school while his overprotective parents (Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson) cope with his traumatizing trials, and his overlooked sister (Izabela Vidovic) undergoes her own rites of initiation at her private city school. Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of R.J. Palacio's bestselling novel is appealing, well-conceived, and likely to please but (expectedly) overly and cheaply sentimental.
** 1/2 out of ****
