Whip It

Jam­mers score. Block­ers block. And piv­ots… well, they sort of block too. If you’re feel­ing real­ly saucy, you could always whip it. Make sense? If it does, you’re obvi­ous­ly a fan of that oestro­gen-infused, hot-wheeled Amer­i­can pas­time known as roller derby.

If not, fear not. Drew Bar­ry­more and co are here to edu­cate. Thrash­ing round a cir­cuit track sport­ing miniskirts, tat­toos and a fair few cross-me-and-die expres­sions, the gals in Whip It are cham­pi­oning girl pow­er and atti­tude galore.

What’s it all in aid of? Well, it starts with a girl. Her name’s Bliss (Ellen Page). She’s feel­ing any­thing but – ​“Just defec­tive, I guess.” Sev­en­teen-years-old and her mother’s very own liv­ing doll, Bliss wants noth­ing more than to break free from the beau­ty pageants and con­coct her own flavour of fun.

Which is when she hap­pens upon roller der­by. Pledg­ing thrills, spills and frills; it’s every­thing that has been miss­ing from Bliss’ life. So she secret­ly joins the ​‘Hurl Scouts’ team and becomes brazen alter ego Babe Ruth­less. But what will mum­my dear­est think?

Based on the nov­el Der­by Girl by ex-roller ath­lete Shau­na Cross, Whip It is the direc­to­r­i­al debut of one Drew Bar­ry­more. Uh-oh, schmaltz alert! But… wait. Despite hav­ing bright­ened up her fair share of blind­ing, Prozac-hap­py rom-coms, this once-rebel-with­out-a-cause does an admirable job of strip­ping back the gloss to forge some­thing that ebbs with a cool, authen­tic indie vibe.

With its teen tor­ment, care­ful­ly craft­ed romance, and Ama­zon­ian action hero­ines, Barrymore’s adap­ta­tion adept­ly chan­nels the spir­it of the sport itself. Rough but heart­felt, her film boasts an edgy ​’70s zeal – from no-fuss visu­als to a head-bang­ing sound­track, which fea­tures the rockin’ likes of Tilly and the Wall, .38 Spe­cial and Goose.

The restrained approach is both a bless­ing and a curse. An empyre­an under­wa­ter clinch, a corn­field romp and a moment of heart­break­ing, well, heart­break are all neat­ly han­dled. Here, Bar­ry­more isn’t afraid to let these most­ly word­less scenes play through images and music.

But when it comes to the sport itself, usu­al­ly a bom­bas­tic blend of gen­uine ath­leti­cism and high camp, she tends to keep the lioness caged. Her biggest friv­o­li­ty ends up being the unveil­ing of the cir­cuit track, in which a black­out gives way to a glit­ter­ing, sus­pend­ed roller-skate.

At its most basic, Whip It is the sto­ry of a girl search­ing for her iden­ti­ty. Which, nat­u­ral­ly, fac­tors in the well-heeled dra­ma of a moth­er-ver­sus-daugh­ter mêlée. But this thread­bare lynch­pin is giv­en fresh legs by the com­bined thesp pow­er of Mar­cia Gay Hard­en and teen queen Ellen Page. Hard­en, as ever, is a force to be reck­oned with. Brit­tle and cold, yet lov­ing and des­per­ate, her inter­ac­tions with Page’s like­able indie chick afford Whip It its strongest asset.

The addi­tion of Juli­ette Lewis as bitch-on-wheels Iron Maven is also a mas­ter­stroke, though it’s frus­trat­ing that her char­ac­ter is kept on a PG leash, reduc­ing her to a side­ways snark that lacks the req­ui­site bite.

In the clut­tered sports movie sub-genre, it would be easy to dimin­ish Whip It to Bring It On with balls (there’s even a sim­i­lar bloody-faced ​‘Is it bad?’ moment). But where the lat­ter embraced sac­cha­rine dairy prod­ucts (and there’s noth­ing wrong with that), Whip It estab­lish­es itself as a rest­less nomad with fire in its belly.