Review of "The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love"

This is the first feature film for many of the people involved, and it shows. There are moments of overt preachiness, a few corny lines and abrupt transitions in places, and the ending of the film is a little too screwball-comedy-esque for my taste, as well (although that's one of the things many other reviewers have really liked about the film.)

The actress who plays Wendy (a married woman with whom Randy has the occasional tryst before meeting Evie) over-acts to the point of embarrassment, as do Evie's friends occasionally.

It's not as sophisticated as more recent lesbian teen flicks like All Over Me, Show Me Love, and Lost and Delirious, but it's also not as cynical. The result is that you're mostly willing to forgive the film's clumsiness in places because it's clearly trying so hard.

One of the strengths of the film is that it incorporates a host of social issues — class issues, gender issues, diversity within the lesbian community, alternative forms of family, racial diversity, peer pressure, religious fanaticism, homophobia, and gender roles — without ever feeling like an "issue" movie.

Maggenti comments in a 1995 interview with Soujourner magazine

I just really didn't want to do a film with all white people in it. (That's) just irritating. And I liked the idea of subverting some of our stereotypes about what are black women and what are white women. I was more interested in class, ultimately, than in race, you know? And I knew that would send people off in a bit of a tizzy: "Mmmm, how do you like that. Upper-middle-class black woman. Black girl who knows how to read." I mean, that's real life, and it's weird that people don't show it in the movies more often.

The film was a great launching pad for writer/director Maggenti — who went on to write the lesbian/bisexual-inclusive movies The Love Letter and Puccini for Beginners.

It was also the beginning of great things for the actors: Holloman went on to play small roles in movies like Boogie Nights and The Myth of Fingerprints, then a recurring villain on the TV series Angel, and now plays a lesbian again in Showtime's lesbian series The L Word. Parker has since starred in several movies, as well, like Remember the Titans and Brown Sugar, and has been a central character on the Showtime series Soul Food for the last four years.

"A movie doesn't change people's lives," Maggenti stated in the interview. "But it is part of a cultural landscape that hopefully moves a community forward. And if young people can see the film and think, 'Wow! I'm okay,' then that's an important accomplishment."

The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love definitely helped to move the community forward in 1995, since it was one of the few lesbian movies widely available and one of the first films about lesbian teenagers, period; its success helped to lay the groundwork for the crop of teen lesbian movies that have come out since then. It also continues to be an entertaining and worthwhile film despite its flaws.