Starring: Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Daniel Stern, Marcia Gay Harden, Alia Shawkat, Drew Barrymore
Directed by: Drew Barrymore
Written by: Shauna Cross
As a child of the seventies, I grew up watching roller derby. Although I had much love for wrestling, roller derby was always cooler because not only were there ladies kicking ass but they were doing it on SKATES. And really, what little girl from the seventies didn’t love roller skates?
Now that I am older I kind of chalked roller derby up to one of those wonderful things you love as a child but you see them about as often as a unicorn. Things like drive ins and diners with car hops grow rarer by the year, but it looks like roller derby isn’t going down without a fight. This is excellent to hear. I mean I have heard for a while now that roller derby was still around thanks to my brother and my friend Chicken in Texas, but that doesn’t make it a wholly tangible thing.
“Whip It!” is the directorial debut of the lovely Drew Barrymore based on the book of the same title. It is the story of a small town Texas waitress named Bliss who stumbles into the world of roller derby and falls in love. She also meets a guy. What this move has going for it besides the great cast and music is the heart. That said the movie is not perfect.
There are long sequences where the scene falls flat due to lack of background audio and I chalk that up to Barrymore’s inexperience as a director. Sometimes silence works, but more often than not, you need to plug the holes. A nice chunk of back and forth emotional dialogue is fun to watch but when it is punctuated by long pauses and runs five minutes or more, you feel like you are watch a table read or community theatre. Without more edits or any music, the scene drags noticeably. Conversely, sometimes a good song is not an excuse to let a scene roll on too long. In particular, the underwater sequence should have been at least half as long if not shorter.
Still, the good outweighs the bad. The casting is superb, which really brings an extra richness to the story. Juliette Lewis managed to make me laugh harder than Kristen Wiig (something I thought to be impossible), and Andrew Wilson as Razor the coach almost overshadowed the ladies all together. If there was a weakest link it was Ellen Page because she seemed to be acting rather than becoming the character. In the end though, she still made Bliss likeable and identifiable.
The action is loads of fun and the quieter emotional moments work pretty well overall. Though the movie becomes almost too sentimental at one point, it ultimately saves itself from veering into schmaltzy territory when dealing with the main character’s hardships.
Basically this movie is just balls out fun. Fun to watch, and I’m sure fun to make. I was lucky enough to watch the sneak preview with a legion of L.A. Derby Dolls fans (as well as a couple of the actors from the film) and it definitely amped up the excitement of the room. However, I’m fairly confident that if I saw this in an empty theatre, I would have been just as thrilled at the end of it. The movie definitely skirts the “chick flick” territory but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case. I would recommend not only seeing the movie but getting out there and checking out your local roller derby this weekend.
