Whip It

Director: Drew Barrymore
Writer: Shauna Cross
Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig
Release Date: October 2, 2009
Length: 1 hour 41 minutes

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It is essentially perfect. It stars the ass-kicking Ellen Page as Bliss, a girl who is letting her controlling mother (Marcia Gay Harden) run her teenage life with superficial beauty pageants, that do not interest her. She lives in the lifeless, boring town of Bodeen, Texas, outside of Austin. When Bliss discovers a tough Roller Derby League in Austin, she decides to put on her old skates and ditch the tiaras. Whip It is another one of those movies about finding out who you are and chasing your dreams, blah, blah, blah. Although the story was a bit clichéd, the cast couldn’t have been better picked. Ellen Page’s performance as Bliss was absolutely adorable and was played with an indescribable innocence that wasn’t used in Juno. I found it more interesting to watch Page in the role of Juno, because the character was much more original and interesting. The character of Bliss  - the awkward teenage girl that doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and is being controlled by her mother - has been done a couple of times before, but it doesn’t hurt to watch it again. In many of the films Drew Barrymore produces (and directs in this case), she puts herself in a very small role. For Whip It, this is no exception, but it almost seemed as if her character, Smashlee Simpson, was unimportant and pointless. It felt as though her character either should have had more of a storyline or shouldn’t have been there at all. It was very inventive and original to use the base of roller derby as what Bliss wanted to achieve and wanted to dream for. I enjoyed every minute of watching this incredible place of tough hilarious women playing derby and what it’s like for them. My favourite scenes were when Ellen Page was with her hilarious coach (Darren Shan) and fellow teammates (Kristen Wiig, Eve, Drew Barrymore). The plot was a bit messy and at some points there was too much going on at once, so you felt confused. I don’t want to sound to harsh, but there were a lot of scenes and a lot of plot changes that were quite pointless (like Barrymore’s character).  Certain events would occur that would have no effect at all throughout the film, but these scenes would take up a good chunk of the movie. I enjoyed most of the film, but after three quarters of the movie, every unique feature in the storyline became clichéd and over-the-top. You wonder how a story so creative and different relies on clichés and things that have been done before, for the last 25 minutes. If it were up to me, I would have changed the ending to this film. But the disappointing finale to this film wasn’t enough to make me dislike Whip It, because overall, I enjoyed Whip It very much. The use of different characters and the interesting setting of this roller derby world really shine through to the audience. It’s easy to say Ms. Barrymore has something to be very proud of.