'We're number two, we're number two'

Rating: 8/10 (30 October 2011)

Ever since childhood Drew Barrymore has been seen as one of the wild children of Hollywood and struggled to find her right calling. She has been in some good films like Donnie Darko but with Whip It she has shown she is a very capable director. So much so Barrymore has been linked to the Twilight series and already done a really good music video with Chloe Mortez.
Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a Texan 17-year-old who is unhappy with her life: her mum (Marcia Gay Harden) has been forcing her to enter into beauty pageants and all she want to do is escape her small town life. She gets an opportunity when in Austin she stills some roller derby girls and she tries out for a team in the local league. Bliss discovers she is a fast roller skater and with her abilities the worst team in the league start to win. But along the way Bliss falls for a local musician, Oliver (Landon Pigg), forms a friendship with her captain Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wigg), forms a rivalry with the star power of a rival team, Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) and has to hid her new activity from her parents.
Whip It is both a sports film and a coming-of-age story and Barrymore and her writer Shauna Cross was able to balance both elements perfect. Tone and style wise it was very much like Juno (and not just because Ellen Page is starring in it). The dialogue is funny but unlike Juno it is more grounded and realistic and combined with the performances of the cast it was all very natural. The cinematography and the music was also very much like Juno, the music being a mix of old indie and rock and fitting to the setting. Barrymore also delivers some real strong set pieces, using hand-held cameras during the roller derby to follow the action and showing an underwater romantic scene. Barrymore was able to mix the comedy and drama to great effect, being funny with dialogue and physical humour whilst allowing Bliss to grow from an unhappy girl to a self-confidence young woman who finds her scene of belonging in the world.
I am personally not a fan of Page, but I think in Whip It she delivers her best performance so far. Whilst I question her being a beauty queen because I believe Page has a more of a girl next door look about her; but her character was more likable then in Juno, someone who more believable then the cocky, sarcastic creature in that other film. Barrymore forms a strong female cast, Wiig plays a very straight role as a mentor to Bliss and Lewis is a typical bully, picking on someone she thinks is weaker then her. Harden starts of as a typical pushy parent but she too also grows and is given more depth then we usually see. Alia Shawkat plays a loyal friend really well and her friendship with Page was a believable typical teenage friendship. Drew Barrymore also has a small role, a character who is either hurting people or getting hurt herself: it was good that she avoided the self-indulgence of giving herself the mentor role. Out of the male members of the cast Andrew Wilson was very funny as the coach of the team and Daniel Stern is a typical supportive dad. For a man who has not acted before Pigg was also a very competent performer.
One little bit of nicpicking I have is for a film that is set in Texas most of the cast talk in normal American accents, not Texan actresses. If they were going to speak in their normal voices why not set the film in another state like Kansas, Colorado or Arizona.
The way Whip It plays out it feels very believable, a story that could actually happen. It was a natural little film.