Barrymore and Page score big in ‘Whip It’

There's no better cinematic experience than when a movie surprises you not once, but twice. The first time it surprises you is with consistently good filmmaking, and the second time is when after the film is over, all of the parts unexpectedly come together into a minor masterpiece. In the rare case of a little film like "Whip It," I left the theater exhilarated, because it not only surprised me by being a good movie, but it never led me to believe it was as great as it was until the credits were rolling.


The plot of "Whip It" is not an unfamiliar one. It's part sports movie, part teen coming-of-age movie, and it borrows traditional story elements from both genres. Ellen Page plays Bliss, a 17-year-old misunderstood social outcast in a small Texas town. Her one extracurricular activity (apart from a part-time job at a BBQ joint) is competing in pageants, something far more important to her mother than to her.  One day, she finds out about a roller derby competition in nearby Austin, and she and her best friend (Alia Shawkat from "Arrested Development") sneak out and, as these types of stories go, it was a night that would change their lives forever.


Bliss falls in love with roller derby, and she joins the Hurl Scouts, a ragtag group of athletes who love roller derby, but they always end up dead last. Will Bliss be the driving force they need to win next year's championship? Will Bliss finally find her place in the world? Will the "big game" be the same night as the "big pageant"?

See what I mean? It doesn't sound like much, does it? But see, that's where you'd be wrong. First-time director Drew Barrymore and screenwriter Shauna Cross manage to find the reality in the film's conventions, both in the sports story line and with Bliss and her family.


Bliss's parents are not one-dimensional plot devices that exist purely to provide conflict at the end of the film's second act. They are real parents who really care about their daughter, and while they may be wrong about some things, they are also right about a lot of things.


Bliss's mother is one of the most fascinating characters I've seen on film this year. Marcia Gay Harden plays her perfectly, never reducing herself to caricature. She and her husband are both working-class, and we are to assume that they don't make very much money. The reason she is a pageant mother is not because she's a heinous bitch, but because the pageants are the only place she has excelled in her life, and she wants her daughters to have a better life than she did. This leads to not one, but two incredibly moving scenes that left this reviewer wishing he had brought tissues to the screening.


I don't want to oversell "Whip It," because part of its charm is how it sneaks up on you. It's not a perfect film by any means – as one would expect, roller derby is not a terribly cinematic sport, and it's impossible to keep up with the score without Barrymore constantly cutting to the scoreboard to update us. At the big roller derby finale at the end of the film, I wasn't even aware the match was almost over. These are minor quibbles, though, because what happens on the track is inconsequential compared to what the movie is really about – a girl finding her place in the world and thus, finding herself. And what a movie it is.