whip it movie

whip it movie

“Whip It” Movie Review -- Bliss Cavendar is going nowhere, slowly. She has a job at a barbecue joint that requires her to wear an apron with a giant pig’s face on it. She has a mother who insists she compete in local beauty pageants. She has a boyfriend who … well actually, no. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. So Bliss decides she has to do something, fast. After all, she’s 17. Life is passing her by. So she catches a bus out of her small Texas town to Austin where she tries out for — and amazingly earns — a spot on the Hurl Scouts roller-derby team.

Yes, “Whip It” is actually a modern movie about roller derby. Even more improbably, it stars Ellen Page, the petite, smart-mouthed star of “Juno,” which is a little like a movie about Michael Cera going for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Ol’ Juno MacGuff as a derby queen? Those jocks spit bigger than she is. The gulf between the dream and the reality could be a large part of the humor in “Whip It.” Unfortunately, there isn’t much comedy in the movie at all. Instead, it just recycles ideas from quirkier indie comedies (the beauty pageants, the schlocky minimum-wage jobs) and more mainstream young romances (the “sensitive” new boyfriend, the follow-your-dream bromides). It’s as if Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine strapped on skates and sailed right into some pat Hollywood comedy.

That’s too bad, because Barrymore — who’s starred in a few pat Hollywood comedies herself — is making her directing debut here (as well as taking on a small part as one of the derby queens). And you’d think, after 30 years of being in front of a camera, she’d have a few novel ideas about what to do behind it. But “Whip It” just moves blandly along, right up to the inevitable “gag” reel under the final credits. The derby scenes are filmed in such tight closeups that we miss out on the plays the women are working so hard to execute; Bliss’ conflicts with her best friend, her new boyfriend and her parents are so obvious they could write themselves.