Whip It [M]

Who is to say what you should do and who you should be? With her directional debut, Whip It, Drew Barrymore says "be your own hero."

I was really tired this morning, but of course, once I'd woken up, I could not get back to sleep so I decided to whack on a movie that I had seen 5 times before and, therefore, could simply stare at without actually understanding what was going on. It just so happened that Whip It was the flick I grabbed in my absent-minded stumbling about and we are now going to sit down and discuss this movie whilst it is quietly playing in the background.

So, Whip It. One of the very few films about some type of sport that I own. The film's heroine, Bliss Cavender is a girl who dreams of escaping her tiny Texas hometown of Bodeen and moving on to bigger things, but unfortunately her mother believes that the only way she can succeed in life is to win the crown at the local beauty pageant known as the Miss Blue Bonnet Pageant. Acting upon spontaneous impulse, Bliss and her friend Pash drive to Austin one night and go to a roller derby game where Bliss discovers another world of freedom, aggression and danger that utterly intrigues her. She plans to audition for a spot on the local Austin team so she can be her own hero, but can she keep the secret from her family?

Ellen Page stars as Bliss and she is simply gorgeous. It was a subtle emotional transformation that Bliss goes through during the film and Ellen managed to pull this off quite well. She speaks very softly and timidly for the first part of the movie and then as the film progresses and her character begins to take on her own unique shape, she begins to speak with more enthusiasm and uses her body a lot more, hand gestures and facial expressions et cetera.

Whip It is the directional debut of Drew Barrymore and I must admit that it is quite unique in its own way. Everything in the film is quite subtle and simple. The story, the dialogue, the costumes, and even the sets and locations. I quite like that about a movie because it is something that you can really believe. I mean, if everything was elaborately constructed in attempt to get a certain message across to an audience, that message gets lost beneath all the glamour and noise. But with Whip It, the message about being your own hero and making your own decisions comes across perfectly clear. It's a very refreshing movie, a great one for a director's debut. Well done Drew.

Packed with other names such as Juliet Lewis, Drew Barrymore (being an actor/director is much more impressive on a resume), Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Alia Shawkat, and Andrew Wilson, Whip It is a really simple and refreshingly unique movie. A bit Bend It Like Bekcham, but with roller derby in the place of soccer. A cute little flick balanced with action, comedy, romance, and a little bit of drama, Whip It is a film that I would watch again.