Movie Trailer Review: Whip It

Opens: October 9, 2009

Website: Official Whip It site

Starring: Ellen Page, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon

My Review: I love movies about girls finding their true happiness when that true happiness isn’t a man. Not that men can’t be great and all, but there’s so much more to life.

Ellen Page stars in Whip It as a teenager in Nowhere, Texas, who dares to prefer listening to indie rock and dying her hair blue rather than attending the various pageants and debutante balls her traditionalist mother forces her into. By chance she happens to discover the existence of a roller derby league nearby, and after attending one match, she knows she’s found what she wants to do. So she straps on her old Barbie roller skates and puts herself into training to get on the team, much to the chagrin of her “normal” family.

If coming of age stories aren’t your thing, you should take something else into consideration: Roller derby is kind of awesome. I wasn’t aware that roller derby continued to exist after the 1980s ended, but there are apparently leagues all over the country, and last year I attended my first match. And since I can’t think of another word to describe it, it was awesome. The women on the teams are strong, beautiful, and able to kick anyone’s ass. And they get to use clever stage names like Hyper Lynx and Beatrix Slaughter. So if nothing else, there’s bound to be some pretty violent derby action to hold your interest.

Whip It is costar Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, and coming from both acting royalty and a long line of female-centric films, I would certainly hope she knows what she’s doing directing a movie like this. She’s always made it a point to portray women as strong, capable people, and there are few women out there stronger or more capable than a roller derby girl.

Would I Pay For It?: While I do think Whip It looks highly entertaining, I’ll probably wait to rent it. Combining the ludicrously high cost of a movie ticket with the utter rudeness of most audience members these days results in me only seeing a handful of movies in the actual theater. But once Whip It is on DVD, it’s going to the top of my Netflix queue.