Along Came Wanda
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Written by: Jan Miller Corran | Directed by: Jan Miller Corran | Genre: LGBTQ/Drama |
| After twenty years, Mary Beth (Constance Brenneman) and her husband Bill (Max Adler) are getting divorced. It’s not an overly messy divorce but still pretty uncomfortable, especially when it’s not really anyone’s fault. Mary Beth is just not happy and feels like she’s lost something in life because she long ago decided to be what everyone else wants her to be. And then there’s the namesake of this film Wanda (Cathy DeBuono), who met Mary Beth because she delivered packages to Wanda’s house. The two have become friends over the last couple of months, and Wanda has an outrageous proposition for Mary Beth. An adventure on the road for just the two of them, Wanda’s even converted her van into an RV that doubles as a soup truck. A way to pay for their little excursion.
Mary Beth finally agrees to the trip, and with some help from her mother to watch her son, the two begin their road-tripping adventure in search of themselves. This is more for Mary Beth than Wanda because maybe Wanda has her own intentions. During the trip, Mary Beth finds out Wanda is gay, but that’s not going to stop her from “doing this” because she likes Wanda and all her weirdness. Along Came Wanda is a cross country trek with horses, camping, spa-like gardens, and even a hint of the potentially supernatural. It’s a buddy movie with a little more meat on the bone. And it was more than a little enjoyable. With Wanda acting as the comic relief in this dramedy of sorts, Jan Miller Corran’s movie flirts with life choices and deeper psychological issues but usually maintains a happy-go-lucky tone. By the time the two end up camping on the property of a famous psychic, I had a pretty good idea of the way things were going. It wasn’t a play-by-play of what was to come but an idea. As for the movie itself, Along Came Wanda looks and sounds pretty good. It felt much larger than your typical low-budget (for a movie) film. It does deal with life changes, and this is an adult-oriented film but the movie never wholly veers into one direction or another. It stays somewhere in the middle of light and airy and serious. It also doesn’t hurt that the acting in this movie is pretty great. Never a bad thing. Along Came Wanda is a movie for anyone looking for a solid drama that is broken up with some funnier moments. It’s classified as an LGBTQ film, but I don’t see why that’s even a thing. For me, it was simply a drama/comedy hybrid about two people trying to find themselves. Actually, it is more about Mary Beth finding herself more than Wanda, but that’s not the point. This may not be a cup of tea for every single movie-lover out there but Along Came Wanda, for me, was an easy four stars. Thank you for reading. ACW TRAILER FINAL_1080.mp4 from Jan Corran on Vimeo. Find this title online |
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