Whip It (2009)

Coming of age and sports have a long history together on celluloid. From The Bad News Bears to Karate Kid to Varsity Blues, it seems like every time you turn around some plucky young man or woman is learning a thing or two about integrity, commitment, or courage on the football field, martial arts dojo, or baseball diamond. Now you can add to that list of classrooms: the derby rink.

That’s thanks to Whip It, the directorial debut from Drew Barrymore. In it, Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a 17-year-old girl from the small town of Bodeen, Texas. When she’s not in school or working with her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) as a waitress at the Oink Joint, she’s being shuttled around the beauty pageant circuit by her mom (Marcia Gay Harden). But contrary to mom’s hopes and dreams, Bliss would rather be dying her hair blue and listening to alt-rock than giving speeches about having dinner with god and achieving world peace.

Poor Bliss is running away from her girly-girl Texas upbringing, refusing to tease her hair, cheerlead, or even watch football (blasphemy in her part of the world) but not sure what she is running toward. That all changes when, on a fateful visit to an Austin thrift shop, a couple of zaftig, tattooed honeys roll into her life. This is her first taste of the roller derby. Bliss convinces Pash to come with her to watch an exhibition of the Texas Roller Derby where she crushes hardcore on the sport…and on Oliver, the boy in the band who plays at all the matches (Landon Pigg). She ends up strapping on her Barbie skates, trying out for and making a team.

Unfortunately her team, the Hurl Scouts, happens to be the worst in the league. The girls are a ragtag bunch of trash talkers with bad-ass, descriptive names like Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore). She’s the one most likely to leave the game with a broken nose. There’s also Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), Rosa Sparks (Eve), and Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell). Their nemeses on the rink are a team called the Holy Rollers, headed up by Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis).

I’m pretty sure you can see where this is all going. Predictably, with the addition of their newest teammate Bliss (or Babe Ruthless as she is called when she’s on wheels) the worst in the league have an amazing comeback where they have a chance to face the best in the league. Other points of predictability: Bliss falls for the boy, who is kind of a jerk. The championship game happens to be on the same night as her mother’s beloved Miss Bluebonnet Pageant. She ends up breaking promises to friends and alienating her family in pursuit of her new hobby. And somewhere along the way, she goes from rebellious teen to rebellious adult.

It sounds familiar because it is. Bend it Like Beckham with a Texas drawl, if you will. But that doesn’t mean this film isn’t still a good time. Adapted from Shauna Cross’s book “Derby Girl”, Whip It is actually a lot of fun. While Barrymore doesn’t quite have the hang of filming fast-paced sports action (I’m still not really sure I understand how the heck you win a roller derby bout), she is right on the money with the more tender moments in the film.

In fact, her directorial skills shine brightest when she ditches all the hipster-cool accoutrement (Stryper t-shirts and American Apparel fishnets abound) and focuses on Bliss’s relationship with her friends and family. One of the best scenes in the movie takes place after the boy has broken her heart and her mom finds her crying into a tuna noodle casserole on the floor.

Kudos are also earned by the fine performers in the film. Although I worry that she has landed squarely in the dreaded typecast zone, Page is a delight to watch. Likewise, all of her teammates are appropriately spunky and funny without becoming two-dimensional. And the energy (or the passing of the torch, really) between Lewis — as intense and nutty as ever — and Page is adversarial without becoming unnecessarily cruel. Iron Maven is a grown woman to Bliss’ teen girl and it is just a game, after all.

But the standout performance is really given by Marcia Gay Harden. Bliss’s mom is not just some overbearing pageant mother, she’s also a working class postal carrier — with a rebellious streak of her own — who just wants the best for her daughters. Harden is able to capture all of those aspects of her personality and portray them in her nuanced performance.

Ultimately, if you’ve seen one sports-related bildungsroman, you’ve pretty much seen them all. But every generation needs its version of the story. With its focus on the of-the-moment derby trend, Whip It could be this generation’s.