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Whip It
A smalltown beauty queen becomes a roller derby champ in this coming-of-age tale starring Ellen Page and directed by Drew Barrymore
Whip It! is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut and it sure feels like a Drew Barrymore movie. The tone and pace reflect her media personality: the story meanders, the editing is unfocused, the acting is goofy and the direction is dreamy. The trailer peddled a different film, one which was full of the kinetic excitement of roller derby. It looked as if Whip It! would shoehorn a predictable coming-of-age story in to the world of sport. That's not to say the result is a bad movie - it's just that Barrymore keeps pointing the camera in one direction when we would rather be looking another way. Roller derby is a more popular sport in the US than the UK but it's still more underground than mainstream. It originated in the endurance skating sessions of the Great Depression and only later became the contact sport that hit its height of popularity in the 1970s. But it wasn't until the 2000s that a grassroots uprising reinvented roller derby and gave it a feminist streak. Roller derby is feminist in the way burlesque performance is feminist, the way pole dancing lessons are feminist. But women also like it for the camaraderie, the athleticism and the aggression. What's impressive about roller derby is its creativity - the players create alter-egos with witty names and costumes. There's a divide not unlike that between the WWE and independent wrestling in that there is roller derby the sport, and roller derby the show. The show is far more violent and theatrical and pulls in predominantly male crowds. It's a fast-paced, energetic sport, the thrill of which the trailer captured. The movie, however, doesn't. Nor does it contain much of that creativity. Barrymore gives some beautiful shots of the alternative side of Austin, Texas, but uses them for a montage illustrating a budding romance, doing nothing that interesting with the derby bouts. Ellen Page plays Bliss, the beauty queen turned bad ass roller girl. We've got used to the Page of Juno and Hard Candy- wise cracking, sarcastic, cynical. Here, Barrymore infects her with that dreamy goofiness. It's as though Page is constantly biting her tongue. Not that we probably could have endured any more of her wise cracking, but such restraint holds back the whole movie. The lethargic pacing works well for the scenes between her and her guitarist boyfriend Oliver (Landon Pigg) - their walks in the Texan countryside, their nighttime swims - but it jars with the roller derby. Barrymore's emphasis suggests Bliss learns more from her boyfriend than the roller derby girls, and that undermines the whole ethos of the sport. Roller derby teams across America welcomed this film with open arms, and will be welcoming a surge of new recruits after opening weekend, despite the poor representation. It is a shame that the Hurl Scout team of the movie have to be taught how to win by their male coach. It is also sad that Bliss must go through that tired old charade of punishing the female protagonist for her bolshiness three quarters of the way through the movie. Also, we could all probably cope without seeing another date-clash-disaster - this time a beauty pageant with a big derby game - in another cinematic climax. It is all sweet, harmless fun. This makes it both potentially enjoyable and frustratingly dull. Too bad Barrymore didn't have the guts to run with the roller derby. Verdict Just watch the trailer over and over for two hours instead. |
