WHIP IT

Dir. Drew Barrymore USA 2009

I feel like there was a bit of a backlash against Ellen Page and quirky indie movies in general following the splash that Juno made back in 2007. And although I liked Juno, I understand that the dialogue and 'look-how-quirky-we-are' characters can be a little grating. Whip It may have appeared similar based on its trailers (Quirky Sport! Ellen Page playing a chick with a weird name! The girl from Arrested Development!), but the film is a bit more grounded than its contemporaries and is a strong directorial debut for Drew Barrymore.

Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavander, a high school senior living in small town Texas. Fed up with her crappy job and the conservative trappings of her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), who forces her to compete in beauty pageants, she takes a trip to Austin with her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat). There she falls in love with the sport of roller derby, particularly a team of underdogs called The Hurl Scouts, which include such cleverly named players as Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), Bloody Holley (Zoe Bell) and Rosa Sparks (Eve). She finds herself having to juggle the pressures of her new secret hobby as well as a new boyfriend and the suspicions of her parents.

Full disclosure: I mostly wanted to see this movie because of all the hot, awesome women in it. Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig and Zoe Bell alone hit three very different points on my sexy spectrum. However, despite my deeply male reasoning, this film is pretty firmly entrenched in sensible, upbeat feminism. In addition to passing the Bechdel Test with flying colors, the film casts a wide net with its portrayal of women, from their goals to their motivations to their actions. Stand-outs include Kristen Wiig (in her most dramatic performance to date) as a down-to-earth single mother and Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven, Bliss' aging antagonist, who manages to show some interesting layers before the film ends. Bliss never comes off as whiny, even when all the conflicts at the end of the second act (where everything always goes wrong so it can get better in the third act) get dumped on her in an unrealistically quick fashion. If anything, the plot involving her hipster/rocker boyfriend feels like the relationship that could most easily be jettisoned from the movie. Guy looked like a tool anyway.

All of this is grafted onto a fairly by-the-numbers sports movie, made interesting by the fact that you don't seem many films about all-female (or frankly any kind of) roller derby. The movie does a fast, easy job of laying out the rules of the game so that someone (such as myself) who's never see it before can follow the action with ease. Drew Barrymore shows she's more than capable of keeping the plot flowing smoothly and displays a good sense of where to place the camera during the derby sequences. I also give her props for having no ego when it came to her own character. She probably only had about a dozen lines during the entire film, the same of which could be said for every other Hurl Scout who wasn't Kristen Wiig. Also her character was clearly stoned for the entire film, which is always good for a laugh.

Also, check out how old Daniel Stern got. He does a good job as Bliss' dad and I always liked him, but I'm wondering where the hell he's been since Home Alone 2. That shit was like 15 years ago. Or Bushwacked. Anyone else remember Bushwacked?

Anyway, I'm assuming most people missed this movie when it was in theaters last year (if its middling box office is any indication), but I'd definitely recommend checking it out now. It would actually make a great date movie. Fun, pro-feminist message for the ladies, hot girls on roller skates kick the crap out of each other for the gents. Enjoy.