Whip It

Whip It is the perfect embodiment of a directorial debut for Drew Barrymore. She is, for all her charm, not a particularly good actress. She doesn't have a big range, is not an elocutionist of any distinction, and has never shown a great depth--she won't be performing Chekhov any time soon. But her innate sunniness, along with a little-engine-that-could biography, have made her an appealing star.

Whip It operates in the same manner. The film is at times a technical mess, and is littered with cliches, but earns my recommendation based on an undeniable attitude and a winning performance by Ellen Page. It exists in a cinematic world that doesn't exist in real life, but very may well in Barrymore's imagination.

The film is set in the world of roller derby. The last movie I saw in this milieu was Kansas City Bomber, starring Raquel Welch, when I was twelve (I saw it in a double feature with Bless the Beasts and the Children). That may be the last studio film about a sport that is pretty much an anachronism now. It was popular in a pre-cable TV era, sort of a distaff version of pro wrestling, and was a forum for attractive but butch women to knock each other around for the blood lust of the audience. Whip It therefore has a unique challenge--it's about a sport that no one really remembers. I suspect more people know quidditch than they do roller derby, and the film has to take a few minutes to explain the rules.

Page plays Bliss, a high school girl in a nowhere town in Texas. Her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) pushes her into beauty pageants, where the mother excelled. But Page has eyes for the Bohemian culture of nearby Austin, and likes to wear ironic t-shirts and boots bought in a head shop. It's in that shop that she serendipitously grabs a flier for roller derby, and on a lark she and her friend (Alia Shawkat) attend.

I have no idea is there is really a roller derby culture in Austin or anyplace else, but this is where the film displays the most verve and creativity. The film is written by Shauna Cross, based on her novel, and she is either a creator of new worlds or a keen observer of a sub-culture. Lower middle-class women, many with tattoos and menial jobs, spend their limited leisure time engaging in a rough and tumble sport, in themed teams (the Hurl Scouts wear faux Girl Scout uniforms, the Holy Rollers in Catholic school-girl outfits) and vivid pseudonyms, like Smashley Simpson, Eva Destruction, and Bloody Holly. On what seems to be a strictly amateur basis, they perform in a warehouse for a small audience and then hawk merchandise after it's over.

Page, captivated by the world, decides to lie to her parents and try out, even though she's too young and has to regain her skating form by using Barbie skates. But she's fleet, makes the team, and adopts the moniker of Babe Ruthless. She bonds with her teammates, none more so than the motherly Kristin Wiig as Maggie Mayhem, and falls for a gangly indie-rock boyfriend (while they were wooing each other a teenage girl behind me sighed rapturously, "I like this guy!")

The cliches then start coming, fast and furious. They are of two types--the sports-movie cliches, where the once bad team finds their mojo and challenges for the championship, and the child-defies-parents-but-then-parents-come-around cliches. However even when I wanted to groan at them I was enchanted by the whole thing, and much of the credit has to go to Barrymore. She may not know how to transition between scenes, but all that time on movie sets has taught her how to earn her characters devotion. And, of course, she is good to her actors and lets them shine. Page plays a very different character than Juno. She's not especially bright or glib, just a girl who is trying to find an identity and escape her mother's shadow, and the camera loves her. If Bliss had decided to take up quilting there may have been a move in that.

Harden also is successful, walking a difficult line of being an overbearing mother without being a stereotype. Daniel Stern is the father, a good-ol'-boy who'd rather watch football than deal with a family crisis. He is also successful in taking a cliche--the parent who allows his child to spread their wings--and creating something interesting.

I find it interesting that Wiig, such a gifted sketch comedian, plays a character who is not funny, but she is very good. Juliette Lewis is Iron Maven, the villainous captain of the rival Holy Rollers, is effective, as is Andrew Wilson as the Hurl Scouts coach, and Jimmy Fallon as the louche ring announcer.

Another character in the film is the city of Austin which, as it did in films like Slacker and Death Proof, comes across as a easy-going Bohemian enclave in a state otherwise as red as a beefsteak tomato. To the kids in Page's town, it is something like the Emerald City, a place to aspire to, peopled by hipsters who indulge in cool pursuits and aren't bogged down in the petty concerns of middle-class suburbia. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, one of the most celebrated independent movie theaters in the country, makes a cameo. This film makes me want to go there.

Some may not be able to get past the obvious story points. Almost every plot turn of the script is obvious, there are no surprises. Yet in this instance familiarity brings comfort, and I left Whip It charmed and entertained.