“Wonder,” a children’s novel by R.J. Palacio, features a schoolboy who’s suspended for bullying the deformed protagonist and ultimately expelled from a prep school in New York. The sequel, “White Bird,” which is the basis of this 2024 film, tells a bit of that boy’s backstory. However, the story isn’t just his.
Now in another school, 15-year-old Julian Albans (Bryce Gheisar) is trying to shake off his past, when his artist grandmother, Sara Blum (Helen Mirren, who’s also the narrator), visits from Paris. He tells her what he’s learned from that infamous expulsion. His idea of fitting in now is simple: to mind his own business and be neither mean nor nice, just “normal.”
