Whip It

I wish I could take credit for picking this month’s movie “Whip It” – but I can’t. My effortlessly stylish architect friend and his equally fashionable husband chose this flick after overriding my half-hearted vote for “Zombieland.” “You picked “Drag me to Hell” last time,” my friend quipped. “It won’t be your turn to pick again for a while.” Fine….I didn’t really care. Any excuse to leave the kids at home and go out for a night and escape!

And escape we did! “Whip it” is a delightful film that leaves you feeling like a teenager again - one that really wants to go out and buy some skates! It’s a lively, light, fun-loving little film with just enough of those time-tested themes of girl power, friendship and the difficult mother-daughter bond to make it feel comfortably familiar and yet also fresh and different. The film centers around the wondrous world of women roller derbies and a young woman’s struggle to find her identity. (Er, sounds familiar, anyone?). Seriously, it’s a great coming of age flick that has all the right ingredients to make it a good (not great) movie. Ellen Page (of Juno fame) gives a solid performance as the dorky, fringy Texas teen, Bliss Cavendar, who longs to escape the suffocating confines of a small town. Marcia Gay Harden beautifully plays Bliss’s mother whose unrelenting pressure to make her daughter into a “true lady” through beauty pageants provides much of the film’s emotional content. It’s not hard to see why Bliss falls for the sexy, raucous, renegade life-style of women skaters. The film masterfully juxtaposes the stilted, insincere, superficial world of southern beauty pageants with the exhilaratingly speed, spontaneity and solidarity of rough, raucous women in a roller derby rink. From Barbie skates to team names like “The Hurl Scouts” and “The Holey Rollers’, this flick is definitely a fun ride from the start all the way to the finish line.