Given the high abundance of adolescent pseudo-intellectual gobbledegook that seeps from the jaws of Ellen Page?s Juno in the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, it's hard to view her with anything but sheer barbaric contempt.
While she hardly shows much range beyond indie-grunge smarty-pants, at least in Whip It she appears likeable. Well, likeable in as much as we didn't want to choke her on her obvious collection of Dawson?s Creek spin-off novellas.
Whip It, while still neck high in offbeat comedy and teen ideals, proves to beat Juno at its heart,? making for a more relatable coming-of-age story. Oh, and features more girl power than one Geri Halliwell?s padded bras from the ?90s.
The real impact of the film comes from the ruthless ring of the Roller Derby. Bone-crunching spectacle of girl-on-girl action, it's joyously outrageous and consistently pulse-racing. It's?a surprise spectacle that is handled with care, humour and emotion.
Certainly, Drew Barrymore?s ? yeah, that moppet from ET turned Charlie?s Angel ? directional prowess is proved especially in the action, managing to effortlessly keep up with the heart-pounding pace of the track. It only really suffers when?she falls into familiar tropes of the indie genre.
Page suffers the same, engaging when interacting with her teammates, coming out of her shell when turning from day-to-day Bliss into?Babe Ruthless on the traick?and even sparking in the witty banter between the team and the coach (an excellent Andrew Wilson ? the forgotten brother of Luke and Owen). When she goes through the romantic notions with prog-rock singer Oliver it starts to all fall apart. The offbeat soundtrack gets turned-up, sickening displays of deluded romantic notions (singing on car bonnets in the middle of nowhere; breaking into a swimming pool and somehow holding their breath underwater long enough to have sex) all start to weigh-down the midsection.
The family drama manages to walk the line slightly better, with?Bliss’ beauty obsessed mother (Marcia Gay Harden -?featuring a nifty plastic forehead) unsure how to deal with her ugly duckling daughter, even Dad (City Slicker and Home Alone alumni Daniel Stern looking about twenty years and stone older) is keeping his own secrets like his daughter.
By final stretch, there are so many loose ends that it works hard to tie them all up as neatly as possible. Perhaps a problem of trying to pack in more of the source material than necessary (it was a book after all) but each resolution comes unnecessarily thick and fast.
Still, it ends with one hell of a Derby, with Ruthless against her newfound adversary,?Iron Maven?(Juliette Lewis), taking to the track in grand crescendo of girls smashing each other in the face while wearing short-shorts. Frankly, if that's not the best thing to happen to cinema in the last decade then we don't know what is.
?Spray Rating: 3.5/5
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