Grating under her mother’s (Marcia Gay Hayden) thumb, Bliss (Elliot Page) yearns to escape her small hometown and make a new life for herself.
After a trip to Austin, Bliss thinks she has found an outlet in roller derby. As she grows in skill and confidence, Bliss’s greatest challenge is not the competition, but defending this opportunity from her mother’s expectations.
Whip It was one of my favourite movies when I was younger.
I had not thought about it for a while until a recent conversation I had with a friend about Elliot Page’s casting in The Odyssey.
It got me thinking about his previous work, and I remembered what an impression this film made on me.
Watching it now, it feels like a time capsule. In the pre-streaming era, modest genre pieces like this would come out a few times a year. Some would hit big, but most would leave theatres quickly to become fixtures on TV or physical media.
It was also one of Page’s big moves after Juno made him a name.
I remember at the time leaving the theatre thinking I was watching the next big sleeper hit. It happened with Juno, right?
While my prediction turned out to be wrong, Whip It has had an afterlife as a cult film. It is not brought up in the first breath, but I have seen it pop on a few lists covering movies about sports, women and teens.
It is impossible to watch Bliss’s struggles with identity without thinking of Page’s transition. I cannot offer any great analysis of it as an allegory, but that context did give Bliss’s journey some metatextual weight.
Bliss’s struggle with her mother is fundamentally about their differing ideas on what being a successful woman is.
What struck me about the movie is how it never treats these struggles as purely ideological differences - this a dynamic between family, between two people with understandable motivations.
While she is an antagonist, Bliss’s mother never comes across as a caricature - she sees pageants as a way to help Bliss achieve a better life for herself than the one she has.
Marcia Gay Hayden’s Brooke feels like a real person. Her motives are also understandable, and Hayden’s choice to underplay the big moments rather than go for histrionics carries more impact (Hayden also has the power to convey a disappointment that feels cellular).
The film is a collection of familiar beats, but the film is smart enough to subordinate plot mechanics to character. The big example is the reveal that rival Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) does not use Bliss’s lying about her age to enter the sport to sabotage her.
This could have been an easy plot turn for the third act, but instead the movie focuses on the real conflict, between Bliss and her mother, or more deeply, Bliss’s conflict about what kind of person she wants to be (what does she ultimately want?).
While the film is savvy in how it plays with conventions, the one place where it feels a little too familiar is the romance with musician Oliver (Landon Pigg).
I believe Bliss’s feelings for Oliver but it still drags. The real romance is between Bliss and roller derby.
It makes sense to have Bliss realise this, but on this viewing I caught myself checking out during the scenes with the pair connecting.
It does not help that Page has better chemistry with Alia Shawkat as her best friend (they have such an easy rapport, why hasn’t anyone cast them together in something else?).
On top of her chemistry with Page, Shawkat’s dry wit is welcome, and her character Pash benefits from exploding an archetype.
She is a straight A student who also has a social life. There is a world where this character would be more of an outcast.
While she is just as anxious to escape, Pash is more ready to embrace new experiences - we see her drinking and hooking up without any reservations.
The supporting cast are excellent:
Daniel Stern is great as Bliss’s warm but checked-out dad; he also has a great rapport with Hayden - he even gets a proper arc, finally taking a stand and giving an opinion.
The derby team are fun - Kristen Wiig, Eve, Zoe Bell and Barrymore herself have a believable group dynamic.
Andrew Wilson, brother of Owen and Luke, gets a rare meaty role as coach Razor, while a pre-cornball Jimmy Fallon has fun as a sleazy announcer.
It is a pity Barrymore has not directed any other features. She shows a strong understanding of tone; the humour never crowds out earnest emotion. The derby bouts feature some POV shots, but are clearly shot and choreographed.
Funny, moving, and featuring some surprisingly gnarly action, if you have not watched Whip It, you are missing out on something special.
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