Whip It
Directed by: Drew Barrymore
Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Bill Stern, Alia Shawkat, Kristen Wiig, Zoe Bell, Juliette Lewis, Andrew Wilson
Rated: PG-13 for sexual content including crude dialogue, language, and drug material.
“Whip It” is the newest instance of the teenage rebellion flick, crossed with the underdog sports team movie. Both of these genres are pretty predictable, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We know what to expect when we sit down to a meal of our favorite comfort food or buy cotton candy at a fair, and it’s the same here: we know what to expect. This isn’t a movie you go see to be challenged, it’s a movie you go see for an escapist good time.
Our heroine, Bliss (Ellen Page), lives in a small town outside of Austin, Texas. She attends high school, is entered in beauty pageants by her determined mother, and works at a restaurant with her best friend, Pash (Alia Shawkat). Her parents are a mixture of horrifying and sympathetic, as are just about everybody’s parents at that age. Her mother, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden), is an aging beauty queen who loves to see her eldest mixing smarts and beauty in a way that lets her relive her glory days. Her father, Earl (Daniel Stern), is a pretty simple guy, and knows how to pick his battles with Brooke, whom he adores but knows is “a fighter.”
Bliss and Pash are both brainy, and on the misfit end of the spectrum in spite of Bliss’s consistent string of victories on the pageant front. Both want out of their small town and are itching for adventure, so when Bliss learns about a Roller Derby match in Austin, they both go, telling their folks they’re off to support their high school football team at an away game.
Pash is intrigued by the rough-house roller skating race that is Roller Derby, but Bliss is enchanted. She’s encouraged to try out by one of the skaters, and (of course) winds up making it onto a team: the Hurl Scouts, who are the worst in the league. The skaters are all larger-than-life, especially the cheerfully violent Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore, who also directs). Bliss also meets a cute boy, Oliver (Landon Pigg), and begins a sweet and hesitant romance. Of course, there’s a villain as well — an older Derby skater who calls herself Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) and is thoroughly displeased that a newcomer like Bliss turns out to be a serious challenger to her team’s reign as champions.
If you’ve seen more than one or two movies in the appropriate genres, the rest of the film is pretty much paint-by-numbers, but the characters are so engaging that it’s hard to mind much. Many of the Derby skater characters are played by actual competitors, and one of the secondary characters is played by the engaging stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoe Bell, whom folks may remember from Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof.”
What makes “Whip It” surprisingly good is that it slips little bits of realism and humanity into what could have been a bland, familiar rehashing of familiar tropes. Yeah, Bliss’s parents drive her crazy, and her mom really doesn’t understand her very well, but some of what she does is pretty selfish — and one of her fellow skaters calls her out on it. Her movie-perfect romance turns out to not be everything she hopes. Even better, for once we are offered a heroine who is both pretty and excited to throw herself into a contact sport that includes bruises. Sure, Roller Derby is a contentious topic in feminist circles, given that pretty much everyone who isn’t skating (coaches, announcers, etc) is male and that the skaters wear thoroughly revealing costumes, but it’s a fierce sort of womanhood which Bliss finds far more appealing than the 50s housewife sort of person her mother wants her to be.
“Whip It” isn’t for everyone, but if you have a soft spot in your heart for movies about teenagers trying to figure out who they are in spite of their parents, and for underdog sports tales, it’s not to be missed.