To be thankful, we can all be grateful for life and the people who surround us. We can try to embrace our challenges, realize everyone has them, and work to love those who seem different.

If that’s difficult, see the movie “Wonder,” which has the power to change any viewer’s perspective on what matters.

Wonder hit the big screen last week, just in time to to salvage Americans from ugly news stories and trashy media entertainment that dispenses with the traditional values that have made this country the envy of the world.

Wonder, based on a novel of the same name by R.J. Palacio, tells the story of a child with Treacher Collins syndrome.

The genetic disorder dramatically deforms the ears, eyes, cheekbones, chins and other facial features of patients before they are born.

The movie’s character “Auggie” Pullman, played by Jacob Tremblay, has undergone dozens of corrective surgeries while his mother, acted by Julia Roberts, home schools him. Despite extensive cosmetic surgical work, the boy remains notably deformed.

The mother and father, played by Owen Wilson, place Augie in a prep school for fifth grade. “Auggie” predictably endures subtle and non-subtle abuses of cruel children who are shocked and offended by his appearance.

WARNING: tissues are needed from start to finish. Nearly everyone in the theater sheds tears through the film. This reaction is not based in sadness, but the variety of emotions that come with watching such a lovable, mentally gifted child persevere through a world that can be simultaneously loving, hostile and mean.

Auggie is neither a victim nor faultless superhero who is somehow superior to others in his world. He is just a kid with a great family but a difficult deformity.

Imagine a movie portraying parents as good people who love their children and work to make them strong. It is hardly ever done. If that’s not unique enough, the schoolmaster is a likable man of fairness and integrity, even in dealing with bullies.

An overnight box office hit, the movie proves Hollywood can succeed without wanton violence, gratuitous and meaningless sexual exploitation, glamorized nihilists and sociopaths, or other forms of exaggerated darkness.

The depth of character development gives viewers a deeper understanding of personalities we all encounter in our homes, schools and places of work.

Wonder defies all the cliché, worn-out Hollywood formulas that have kept so many from the box office in recent years. The movie highlights how the entertainment industry has the opportunity to take an all-star cast and move audiences with messages of goodness and love conquering evil and hate – with non-sensational, ordinary characters leading typical lives.

Wonder, an instant classic, will lift the spirits of viewers of all ages this holiday season. Americans will give thanks for more of this in TV and film.