Picture the scene. It’s a sweaty squint inducing August day. Everyone is out, about, in a good mood exhibiting their sweat patches, walking their rottweilers, tipping their coke bottles, soaking up rays while they still have ‘em. Except you. You’re watching all this from the inside of a hospital room, perched on a yellow bed holding a little plastic cup of pink gooey gunk with water gathering at the sides. They’re waiting for you to drink it.
They’ve been waiting for over half an hour. And you’ve got ten minutes to down this solidifying concoction of doom before you’re admitted indefinitely for crimes against swallowing. Seconds tick by. You inspect the cup from all angles, put it to your lips in anticipation of what may be if you can withstand the excruciation still standing. Look up slyly at those eyeing you with Disney villain hostility. And take one last glance out the window imagining a grand escape, kicking through the glass on rollerblades as you plunge this shite into your mouth and wince at the first drink to pass your tonsil-less throat in over a day…Hours later you’re on ebay. Job done. You’re swallowing black rollerblades in a size 6.
Picture the scene. It’s an icy November day. Everyone is making snowmen as you type unsent item report number 33857488.
This is one of a plethora of reasons as to why Whip It is the best thing to happen to cinema, to roller skates, to me, in plum ages. Drew Barrymore is a woman. She is also the director. Hurray for this. Daniel Stern, nostalgic post-pubescent voice to Fred Savage in The Wonder Years, finally enters the frame as Pops. His finest hour since being attacked by pigeons in Home Alone 2, I might add. Juliette Lewis, underdog actress and personal hero, is lured away from rawk back to the screen to do ‘villain’. It’s a SPORTS movie, the most inspiring of all film genres. More importantly, it’s an UNDERDOG sports movie and the best yet this side of The Mighty Ducks. (And maybe Million Dollar Baby.) In an underdog sports movie, it’s ok to come second because you learn that it’s ok to tell your mum/mentor to fuck yourself. (Charlie Conway rejoins the Ducks. Rocky gets back in the ring.) Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), meanwhile, leads a double life in Nowhere, Texas, waitress/beauty pageant queen by day, sexed up roller skate derby menace by night. It’s a blessed existence of verbal mockery and physical bullying to be embraced. It’s an act of parental defiance, a comment on American obsession with competition, Ivy League destruction; it’s Fight Club for girls. As Bliss finds her feet on the tracks she’s forced to confront her niche beyond the comprehension of school hierarchies and her mother’s suffocating outdated ideologies of success. Happily she gets to do it among a fantastic supporting cast of trash culture champions including comedienne Kristen Wiig, an ‘STD free’ commentator, the rolling joke of Barrymore’s lateness to scene (presumably from pressing ‘record’) and a frankly outstanding turn by Andrew Wilson as Coach, stamped across the film in in one catchphrase, “Every! Single! Time!” Ellen Page, though playing to type, is spared over exuberant sentences for once and plays our dispossessed hero with heart and finesse. She even gets an ‘is she dead!!!??’ nailbiter. Though Juliette Lewis starts the food fight and is still therefore cooler.
This film contains lots of tartan skirts. In short, if black rollerblades size 6 user tinaspence016 had bothered to go to the post office, this film would have been my biopic. Please see it for the sake of woman directors world over.
