Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wildflower’ on Hulu, a ‘Coda’-esque Feelgood Dramedy Starring Kiernan Shipka

Filmmaker Matt Smukler based Wildflower (now on Hulu) loosely on the story of his niece, a teenager who grew up caring for her neurodivergent parents, and underestimating her ability to achieve typical things like independence and getting into college. Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka anchors this coming-of-age dramedy whose ensemble cast includes Jacki Weaver, Alexandra Daddario and Jean Smart, with Smukler hoping to stir up laughter and tears on the way to inspiring us to feel a little better about the state of humanity. Now let’s see if he succeeds. 

WILDFLOWER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: POV: Bea (Shipka), on a gurney, being wheeled quickly through hospital corridors. Images are bleary. She’s comatose. The words INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS appear on the screen. Her family members gather in the room, bickering and panicking and smoking cigarettes. There’s her rock-steady maternal grandmother Peg (Smart), her gregarious paternal grandmother Loretta (Weaver), her tidy suburbanite aunt Joy (Daddario) and uncle Ben (Reid Scott). And then there’s her parents, Derek (Dash Mihok) and Sharon (Samantha Hyde), who act childish, fighting over who should’ve fetched Milk Duds from the vending machine. They have every right to be upset, considering the state of Bea. But we have access to the inside of her head, because there she is in our ears, narrating. What the hell happened to her? She’s not revealing that yet. Her memory’s bleary, and anyway, the movie has to build up some suspense and lead to a big reveal in about 80 minutes or so.

Bea starts before the beginning: She hadn’t been born yet. Sharon was born with an intellectual disability. Derek suffered a traumatic brain injury after he was in an auto accident. He’s mowing the lawn and she’s looking out the window at him with fascination. They go on a date, they get married, they have a baby and name her Bambi, after Sharon’s favorite cartoon character. Understandably, Bambi now prefers to be called Bea, who quips that her full name destined her to be a dancer in a gentleman’s club. Sharon and Derek’s relationship causes a rift between Joy and Earl (Brad Garrett), who disagree on whether the newlyweds can raise a child on their own. Notably, Derek can drive, although Sharon can’t get her license; they both can hold down jobs. That’s enough to get them outta there, first living in a van in a trailer park in Las Vegas, then eventually moving into their own little house.

Bea narrates the flashbacks, and works her way up to her present comatose state, although the narrative is muddy, because the how’d-we-get-here arc is led by a social worker (Erika Alexander) who’s interviewing all involved parties, trying to piece together what happened. The narrative works its way through the ups and downs of Bea’s life with parents whose lack of emotional maturity seems to be a burden. The house is dirty, their nutrition is suspect and Derek’s attempt to teach Bea to drive at age 10 is disastrous; on top of that, Derek is a heavy-duty follower of his lord and savior Jesus Christ. She temporarily moves in with Joy and Ben and their twin sons, where she learns about veggies and vitamins. Her aunt and uncle help out by funding her tuition to private school, where she’s bullied for being “poor” and having parents who are the r-word. Bea hangs with her bestie Nia (Kannon Omachi); lands a boyfriend, Ethan (Charlie Plummer), a survivor of testicular cancer; and holds down a job and helps pay the bills and fills her parents’ prescription pill organizers and, one time, exploits Sharon’s gullibility by getting her to buy her booze so Bea can fit in with the cool kids at a party. It sure seems like Bea’s Coming Of Age is especially Coming Of Agey, isn’t it? 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Many easy comparisons to CODA, the dramedy about a teenage girl with deaf parents that landed the best picture Oscar in 2022.

Performance Worth Watching: Wildflower is a bit all over the place, but Shipka holds it together with a grounded, winning, no-nonsense performance (although that cornball voiceover narration does her no favors).

Memorable Dialogue: Pre-adolescent Bea explains why she came to her aunt and uncle’s pristine breakfast table without any pants on: “I’m letting my boys breathe.”

Sex and Skin: Just teenage smooching.

Our Take: Wildflower is a profoundly mixed bag whose positive and negative attributes threaten to cancel each other out. Shipka’s pragmatic take on Bea works wonders when many of the other characters border on cartoonish (Weaver’s lounge-singer grandma character is the worst offender; the aunt and uncle are flat suburban stereotypes; Bea’s school is populated with mean girls straight out of an ’80s John Hughes flick). Hyde, a neurodivergent actress, and Mishok give sympathetic portrayals of people with disabilities, although their characters are thinly written. The juxtaposition of neurodivergent parents with a non-disabled offspring opens the door to reframed discussions of sex, religion and stigma that are bold and nervy at the same time they’re clunky and simplistic. The script aims for clever and lively, and is never bland, but it feels overwritten, and tries too hard to be funny.

So it’s a relief when all pretense is set aside for well-timed tender moments between characters – interactions frequently anchored by Shipka, a skilled she-cries-and-you-cry-with-her actor – that allow the characters to breathe, to exist in the moment without the burden of elevated dialogue or the danger of being squashed by heavily calculated slice-of-life overtures. Smukler maintains in the setting an authenticity his characters sometimes lack, and the screenplay builds to a few climactic moments (why she’s in the coma, the awakening, some boyfriend and BFF drama) that the director struggles to balance. There are moments when we don’t believe these characters could be real, but only the most hardened misanthrope wouldn’t like them.  

Our Call: Wildflower navigates the thornier aspects of its subject matter reasonably well, which balances out its corny sentiment and broad characterizations. As heavy-handed coming-of-age stories go, it could be worse – so STREAM IT, but those averse to emotional manipulation should approach with caution.   

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.