Wildflower

We found this movie streaming on Prime.

Kiernan Shipka, about 21 during shooting, is the lead character, Bea Johnson, a senior in high school in southern California. When she was born her parents actually named her Bambi but she grew up being known simply as Bea.

She is very intelligent and very grounded, even participating in high school track. But she feels bound to home by her parents.

Her dad was a normal boy, but when he was 12 he suffered a head injury which the doctors claim arrested his mental development. So mentally and emotionally he was more like a preteen.

Her mother was actually mentally deficient from birth. The eventual mom and dad meet and being love at first sight get married in Las Vegas much to the consternation of the parents of the two.

Then Bea was born, when she is 10 she is taught to drive the truck "in case there is an emergency." As a teenager she almost serves as boss and caretaker of the family because her parents aren't always reliable.

There are several side stories, the mean girls at school, the counsellor who is encouraging her to apply to a good college but she doesn't know if she can leave, the cool kid at school who becomes her boyfriend. A few unexpected things happen.

All in all a very nice, meaningful, and entertaining movie. Kiernan Shipka is great in the role.

Wildflower, Matt Smukler's debut feature, follows Bea, a plainspoken teenager navigating life with neurodivergent parents. The film follows Bea's high-school drama, cheeky romance, and the struggles of her best friend and relatives. The film is inspired by Smukler's family and features a cast of distinctive characters. Kiernan Shipka leads an endearing cast in her animated portrayal of Bea, who lies comatose in a hospital bed, surrounded by worried family members. The film explores Bea's life from childhood to the recent past, narrated by her omniscient subconscious in VoiceOver. Bea's intra-family relations, resentments, and communication style are explored through flashbacks. Her feuding grandmothers Loretta and Peg, her neurotic aunt Joy, and her anxious husband Ben, are all involved in their bickering. Bea's parents, Sharon and Derek, are calm and collected, maintaining a steady faith that their daughter will wake up. Bea grew up hearing other adults describe her parents as "special," a euphemism for neurodivergent. Bea recounts how Sharon and Derek met, the rush of their marriage, and the thrill of her birth. However, everyone else, including Peg and Earl, struggle to trust their daughter to make her own decisions. Loretta, Derek's mother, harbors animus for Sharon's family but seems less fazed. There is an unacknowledged but suffocating assumption that the new parents simply can't do it. Wildflower is a film that reinterprets the experiences of disabled characters through the perspective of a child turned caretaker, Bea. The film follows Bea's journey from her early years in a mobile community to her senior year in Las Vegas, where she learns valuable lessons about her parents and their neurotypical lens.

Bea's early years are filled with adventure and freedom, but her exposure to life outside her immediate family leads to a decrease in her tolerance for Sharon and Derek. She reads their laid-back attitude as clumsy and finds their carefree approach frustrating. After a driving lesson goes wrong, Bea is sent to live with her aunt Joy and Ben, who teach her skills she missed out on but annoys her. Wildflower quickly moves on to Bea's senior year, where she hawks school raffle tickets with her best friend Mia, hoping to win a free trip to Disney. Her attitude changes, but she still has a renewed appreciation for her parents. The film gains momentum when it settles into Bea's recent past, chronicling her romance with Ethan, a fight with Mia, her guidance counselor's insistence on college application, and a petty feud with their high school's resident mean girl. The film highlights Bea's struggle to overcome her condescending relationship with her parents and everyone around her. When she starts to see them in the same light as the rest of the world, she overcompensates by turning herself into a caretaker, resurfacing childhood resentments and revealing hard-to-swallow truths. The film culminates in a tumultuous blow-up, but relationships are repaired, amends made, and Bea learns valuable lessons along the way.

"Wildflower" is a movie based on a true story about family love and family dynamics.

The story starts kind of bumpy, but finds its rythm quickly, as it moves from the current timeline, in which Bea is in the hospital and her family along with a social worker are trying to piece together what happened, to the past as Bea herself narrates her life's story from her parents marriage to her birth, to her having to take care of them.

The movie overall is enjoyable and the pace of it was nicely handled, as to not confuse the viwer with the back and forths of the timeline. The performances were good as well.

This was really good - just across the board good. And it's true - it's about a real family. It's very well done - we enjoyed it start to finish - but it does get better towards the end. Anyhow - excellent movie - amen. I hope more people review and bump up the ratings - because this is way better than it currently shows!!! It's sweet, it's fun, and again it's true - really enjoyed it. And that's about that. And now I'm rambling to hit my minimum character requirements - I really don't need to type 600 characters - to say whether or not I enjoyed a movie. But again - we really enjoyed this - lots of fun!

I cried 4 times, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'll do it again in a heartbeat. I will absolutely be watching this movie again, but I probably won't need to anytime soon, because it's one of those that will stick with you for a while. This movie pulls on your heart strings, while giving you that warm fuzzy feeling with its heartfelt moments. The acting is great and the soundtrack is perfect. I found myself wanting to Shazam every other song. Don't be afraid to happy/sad/whatever you feel like cry because it will be worth it. To find out that this was based off a true story made it hit even harder! Do yourself a favor and watch it now :)