Review of Wonderstruck

Even during this pandemic when there is nothing to do, my wife and I are hard-pressed to find something to like in this movie. We had great hopes that we would be rewarded at some point during the long slog to get to the credits, but there was nothing but a contrived ending that didn't pull at any heartstrings. Movies often suspend logic in an entertaining way to spin a story, but even a story about two deaf children lost in New York City 50 years apart, each searching for their place in the universe, falls flat. The strange fact is that neither child needed to be deaf in this story; the story would be the same. Their deafness no doubt enhances the sympathy of the audience, but it only serves to make the movie excruciatingly difficult to watch when reading the handwritten notes that are exchanged back and forth, almost indecipherable being flashed up on the screen for seconds. And it seems the cinematographer shot the movie with a widow's veil over the camera's lens to achieve a murkiness that matched the murkiness of a movie with neither plot nor storyline. Eyestrain is the result. The audience is left to wonder why the mother of the young boy hid the identity of the boy's father; why none of the boy's father's relatives ever reached out to the boy; why the mother played "Space Oddity" over and over, as if her son's father was an alien from Mars. Please, do not be deterred from watching this movie because of this negative review; see for yourself.