She's come a long way home...

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2010)

...from the winsome days of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," but Drew "Poison Ivy" Barrymore has a much longer way to go before anyone accuses her of being the female Clint Eastwood or Quentin Tarantino. Her directorial chops are far from lacking in this by-the-book debut starring Ellen "Juno" Page, but "Whip It"'s meager performance at the box-office suggests that she either picked a poor vehicle in which to strut her stuff (possible, given the heavy geek factor of Roller Derby), or simply didn't give audiences anything to make them sit up and say howdy (more likely). I'm sorry, but if you're making a movie called "Whip It" (about Roller Derby, of all things) and can't manage to work in at least a snippet of Devo's biggest/only hit, there's something wrong.
Nonetheless, I don't mean to be too negative. Barrymore's handling of Shauna Cross' adaptation of her own novel is reasonably competent in a journeyman sort of way. I can't argue her ability to coax good performances from the likes of Page (who blessedly takes a distinct step away from her well-established teen-angst-with-worldly-attitude persona), Marcia Gay "The Mist" Harden, Kristen "SNL" Wiig, Juliet "Natural Born Killers" Lewis (slumming in a sadly underwritten support role), and Daniel "Home Alone" Stern. Barrymore does well with her cast, no question, even with the likes of relative non-actors like Zoe "I'm really a stuntperson" Bell, Eve "I'm a rapper" Jeffers, and Jimmie "I'm a comedian" Fallon, though admittedly she had no business aping the aforementioned Tarantino by inserting herself into an utterly forgettable ensemble role. Sorry, Drew, you ain't no Q., despite your best of intentions.
Ultimately, and as is almost always the case, the core weakness of the film is the script, with a secondary nod to the casting of Page in the lead. I haven't read the source novel (and likely never will), but I suspect it asked a lot less willing suspension of disbelief. Page as a beauty pageant regular (willing or otherwise)? No one in Roller Derby officialdom checking out her credentials? The miraculous transformation from erstwhile dilettante to seasoned jammer? These are a few of the happenstances that force the audience to turn a blind eye in order to buy into the story.
Back to Barrymore: as noted, the lady wrangles actors well (the one notable failure being the inexplicably cast Landon "I'm a singer" Pigg), but her cinematic abilities remain mundane. The actual derby sequences in the film merit some approval, but mostly left me wanting to rewatch Norm Jewison's classic "Rollerball" for genuine genre excitement and tension, despite some nice lensing by DP Robert "Red Eye" Yeomans. Any number of scenes meant for character development just don't get off the ground properly, a fault of the script again, but also due to Barrymore's irresolute sense of pacing. Everything's just a hair too pat and simplistic (a supposed Derby pro with the fanciful moniker, Maggie Mayhem, invites a frail pipsqueak like Page's Bliss Cavendar to try out?--C'mon!), and it all wraps up far too happily and tidily. It wouldn't take much editing to fit this film into the Family Channel or worse. Barrymore and Cross push all the right faux-feminist girl-power buttons, but really, they don't have much of anything terribly powerful to say. I'm unsurprised that it suffered an indifferent fate in the theaters; perhaps it'll do better on video.
Pretty much routine viewing, in one eye and out the other. I wish Ms. Barrymore well, but also wish she'd picked a better script to cut her directorial teeth upon.