Whip It (2009)
This was a fairly entertaining movie about Roller Derby. Ellen Paige (Juno, Inception) plays Bliss, an indie-rock girl from the small town of Bodeen, Texas. Bliss and her friend, Pash played by Alia Shawkat (Bart Got a Room, Deck the Halls) are waitresses at a local diner. Bliss’s mother, Brooke played by Marcia Gay Harden (The Hoax, Space Cowboys) tries to get Bliss to be a pageant winner, much like herself. Bliss has no interest in winning the pageant and instead decides to try out for a Roller Derby team in Austin, Texas named The Hurl Scouts. The Hurl Scouts are a group of girls who are perfectly content being the worst team in the league. The team consists of Maggie Mayhem, played by Kristen Wiig (Extract, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Drew Barrymore (Wedding Singer, Wayne’s World 2)and a few other actresses I am not familiar with. The ragtag team tries to defeat The Holy Rollers, led by Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers, From Dusk Til Dawn) who have been league champs for the past two years.
At first, Bliss is the typical newcomer who can barely skate. Soon after tryouts, The Hurl Scouts realize they can use Bliss’s speed to help them win a few games. I was not familiar with the rules of Roller Derby but it was actually interesting to watch attractive women fly around in circles attempting to knock the other girls down. If the sport were still on tv (big in the 1960’s I believe), I might even consider watching it. Little to the surprise of the viewer, Bliss ends up being the key to the team’s success.
Bliss’s father, played by Daniel Stern (My Blue Heaven, City Slickers) ends up supporting Bliss’s new role, much to the dismay of his wife. However, with some time, the two parents end up rooting for their daughter. The movie has no violence, nudity or bank robberies but I still enjoyed it. It was kind of funny and for some reason I can’t quite figure out, fairly entertaining. Had I seen the movie in the theaters, I would have been disappointed. If I had rented it, I may have been disappointed as well. However, watching it on tv at three in the morning on a Saturday after getting home from a Bachelor Party, made the movie rather enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to kill a few hours and is not a harsh movie critic.
