The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 5 Days to go: 7
Movie #435: Whip It
There was nothing to stop me going to the theater in October 2009 when Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It was released. A movie full of awesome chicks kicking ass? I’m in. And as my now-husband and I watched it together, what we experienced was a lovely, fun film — a coming of age tale for girls, which so rarely gets produced — full of super exciting roller derby to boot. Immediately, we believed the eight-year-old girl in our household would be perfect for the sport. Wild and lively, and a little bit reckless, she was a girl with a joyful ferocity. And she was pretty good on skates, too. How wonderful it would be to see her speeding along on a track, an athletic powerhouse. I even came up with a name for her on the spot. It was devastating to think she’d have to wait thirteen years (assuming the minimum age was 21, as the movie suggests). Oh, well.
In the almost six years since the film came out, naturally a lot has happened in that little girl’s life, not all of it good. For a while there she fell victim to the kind of self-doubt and loathing that plagues so many little girls in their tween years, and as much as we could tell her we loved her and were proud of her and thought she was smart and beautiful and amazing, it doesn’t always sink in. There are other influences in kids lives, and some of them are malicious and demeaning. Sometimes it’s the voices in your own head that hurt you the most.
A lot of times these sorts of things are phases you go through and grow out of, and part of them is no doubt due to hormonal swings common to all kids at this age, but she needed a change, so we made some. And through a series of serendipitous events, she found herself at a skating clinic where she met a junior roller derby coach, and that ignited a spark.
I didn’t know there was even such a thing as junior roller derby, obviously, but here it was, showing up in our lives right when we needed it, and through roller derby we’ve watched that girl thrive. She’s more confident, she’s more comfortable in her skin, she’s more athletic and she’s more fit. The roller derby I’ve experienced isn’t nearly as flashy or composed as Whip It would have you believe, but it’s been an absolute godsend in our lives, and when Bliss (Ellen Page) tells her parents, “I am in love with this,” it brings tears to my eyes.
The movie has a lot of joy with regard to all the derby, from great names like Smashley Simpson (Barrymore) to Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) to Rosa Sparks (Eve) to Eva Destruction (Ari Graynor, who is a goddess and should be in everything), to a hundred more. (Plus it really feels like the food fight scene is something Barrymore has wanted to be able to orchestrate for years.) All the hits and the jumps and the checks are brutal and exciting, and supporting turns by Jimmy Fallon (as Hot Tub Johnny) and Andrew Wilson (the OTHER Wilson brother, as Razor) bring a lot of comedy to the thrilling competition. But the movie is about so much more than that.
Bliss doesn’t just learn to find herself in derby, she also learns to find herself in general. She learns that even though she doesn’t agree with her parents on things — she thinks her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is living in the 1950s and her father (Daniel Stern) is oblivious to anything that doesn’t concern him — that she can find her own way without being a jerk to them and hurting their feelings (thanks to the stellar, gentle advice from Kristen Wiig’s Maggie Mayhem). She also learns that boys can disappoint you but that she, too, can disappoint her friends when she abandons BFF Pash (Alia Shawkat) as the derby warehouse gets raided by police. It’s a huge growing up moment for her, because she seems to hold herself to a higher standard after that point, and she doesn’t suffer fools either. To earn her time, you’re going to have to treat her with respect, which is a stance everyone should take but so many people forget. Plus she manages to really make her parents proud, because as stressful as that relationship can sometimes get, they aren’t her enemies and they want what’s best for her always. As all good parents do.
I don’t know how much Whip It really gets right about roller derby — I know for a fact that typical derby scores way more points than these bouts do, at least from what I’ve seen, and I don’t think there’s any way Bliss could’ve kept it secret as long as she did — but it gets a whole hell of a lot right about being seventeen, about wanting to be grown up, about thinking you know everything but being wrong because you’re still very much figuring stuff out. And it gets right how empowering derby can be, and how freeing, and how important it is to find the thing that makes you happy, whether you’re seventeen or in your thirties.
And it’s a sentimental favorite in our house, for obvious reasons.
Viable Option 