Barrymore’s WHIP IT Has Lots of Hurl Power!

You ever get jealous of those little kids with wheels in their sneakers? Or just annoyed? Well, I’m part of the former group. I loved rollerskating as a kid and even in my small town, I was lucky because we had two to choose from when it came to putting 8 wheels to wood (this was long before Razors and Wheelies). One was mostly for the kids who wanted to make out in the many available dark corners. The other was for the church groups to go to. I frequented both. No, not for the nookie or the bible studies. It was for the love of going really, really fast on my own two feet. Seeing the limited advanced screening Whip It last night reminded me of why I loved to strap on the wheels and spend hours zipping around in circles at what felt like a hundred miles an hour (and occasionally bumping into people and watching them fall – hey, I was 10!). I want to roller skate everywhere I go now. But to be honest, I really just want to roller skate with Ellen Page.

Anyone who has seen Page in her other roles (Juno, Hard Candy), knows that the girl can switch between snarky and vulnerable, shy and bull-headed, sweet and devious with an ease and confidence that far outpaces other actresses her age and beyond. In this film, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, she gets to do it all again and it’s damn fun watching her do it. Although I fear that her diminutive size will have her playing teenagers for at least another decade, in films like Whip It, she’s perfectly suited to the role. In the role of Bliss Cavendar, Page plays a small town Texas girl who suffers for being a bit of a fashion rebel (enough to make Juno jealous… she wears a Stryper shirt almost every day) when all her mother wants is for her to be the Blue Bonnet pageant queen. This tug of war between mother and daughter is the foundation for the film and it only gets tested further when Bliss discovers the world of Roller Derby with her best friend Pash (played dutifully with a memorable presence of her own by Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) during a “maybe boys will be there” road trip to nearby Austin. Yes, there’s boys to be found at the derby, but Bliss finds so much more as she watches the perpetual last place team, the Hurl Scouts, get happily pummeled by their rivals. As you can imagine, Bliss finds her way onto the team and realizes she’s discovered something she truly loves, knowing full well that her mother would kill her if she found out. Beyond the fear of discovery by her mother, Bliss still has to deal with classmates who tease her for appearing “alternative”, a burgeoning romance with an indie rocker boy, and a snarling derby rival in the form of a wild-eyed Juliette Lewis, who, despite her lean, wiry frame, I would be afraid to bump into at the post office, much less in a Roller Derby ring. And Bliss is able to deal with it all, at least for a little while…

Whip It is pretty much your standard coming of age film with all of the usual markers: rebellion, romance, and betrayal, but this unique venue keeps it from feeling forced or cliche. The thing that really elevates the film is the pitch perfect casting. Page and Shawkat make believable buddies yearning to break out of their small town surroundings. Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern play Bliss’s parents, both devoted to their family but also doing their best to keep up appearances among their small town friends and rivals as well as with their own children. But it’s the Hurl Scouts and their beleaguered manager Razor (played by the lesser exposed Wilson brother Andrew) that steal the show. Foremost among them is the always hilarious Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live. Thankfully, she’s been given a role where she doesn’t have to use an odd voice or portray herself as mentally disturbed (not that those characters aren’t always funny regardless). She’s Kristen Wiig on wheels and that’s perfectly fine with me. Of course, she has to play it straight to a point (even if her name is Maggie Mayhem in the ring) since she gets to be a sort of Obi-Wan to Page’s Babe Ruthless (Bliss’s derby girl identity). As for the rest of the team, I’m guessing they spent a lot of time on the track, especially prolific real world stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Bloody Holly), who likely didn’t need a stand-in for her many swings around the ring with costars Eve (Rosa Sparks) and Fringe’s Ari Graynor (rival Eva Destruction). Not to be left out of the fun was director Drew Barrymore as Smashley Simpson, who took on the role of the team’s gleefully broken and bloody abuse magnet (and dispenser) when she wasn’t behind the camera.

I was happy to see that the screenplay was written by Shauna Cross, the same woman who wrote the book it was based on, Derby Girl. So many things get lost in translation on the way to Hollywood that it’s great to see the creator of the material have a more prominent hand in bringing it to the screen, even though I’m sure it’s not a one-to-one translation.

Whip It isn’t ground breaking cinema by any means, but it’s a solid and sweet, fast and fun, hilarious and heartbreaking coming of age story with an whip-smart cast and a hero you can cheer for even when you know she’s screwed up big-time (because we’ve all likely been there before). Barrymore deftly balances the insanity of the derby ring with Bliss’s quieter internal struggles, giving them both equal time in front of the camera, delivering the right amount of weight and punch for each without feeding us a ham-fist sandwich with message cheese. I could have done without the overly-long swimming pool scene, but there could have been more cliche and uncomfortable ways of portraying what that scene was all about (sorry, no spoilers).

I’d actually call this a “family film” (hesitant but heavy on the air quotes), something a mother and daughter should see together, but I’m afraid that would scare off some people who would prefer something more scatological (which it’s not). For me, half the fun was hearing the endless slew of the punny nicknames given to the derby girls, especially when delivered by the manic ring announcer played by Late Night’s Jimmy Fallon, whose rants will likely be big part of the DVD outtakes.

In a nutshell: girls, it’s perfectly fine to drag your boyfriend to this one, even though a night out with the girls might be the better option. And guys, it has girls in sexy outfits and roller skates beating the crap out of each other! How is that not the tagline for this movie?!

Whip It, directed by Drew Barrymore and starring Ellen Page and Kristen Wiig, hits theaters October 2nd.