Whip It!

I think we can all agree that Drew Barrymore is one of the most lovable human beings on the planet. Not only is she totally BFF-approved, but she’s overcome a well-documented childhood-from-hell to become a major Hollywood player, both as actress and producer—all without losing her giddy flower girl charm.

I think the thing I like most about Whip It!, Barrymore’s directorial debut, is that it manages to capture so much of Drew herself. It’s spunky, it’s spirited, it has an undeniable indie cool—and it cheerfully celebrates female sisterhood and girl power.

Ellen Page—wisely choosing her first starring vehicle since her breakout role in Juno—plays Bliss Cavendar, a misfit from the small town of Bodeen, TX, who longs to escape the world of barbecue, beauty queens, and football. When she goes on a shopping trip to Austin with her hovering mom (Marcia Gay Harden), she sees a couple of loud, fierce, and sexy girls on roller skates—they’re roller derby players. These girls are not demure like her mother’s beloved pageant queens—they are defiantly badly behaved. Bliss is mesmerized. So she drags her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) to a roller derby match and, afterwards, shyly approaches Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) from the Hurl Scouts. “You guys are my heroes,” she says sincerely. “Strap on a pair of skates and be your own hero,” Maggie replies. Which is exactly what Bliss does.

Turns out, Bliss is good—she’s small and quick and stronger than she looks (her smallness, of course, might be a virtue of the fact that she is 17, four years below the allowable age for roller derby). Freshly dubbed “Babe Ruthless,” she immediately joins the pugilistic Smashley Simpson (Barrymore herself, hilariously playing against type) as the Hurl Scout’s newest striker and faces off against the nasty Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis).

Of course, there’s a boy (Landon Pigg) and of course, he is cute and wears a tattered army jacket and plays in a band. But Whip It!—which also features a juicy part for Daniel Stern as Bliss’s goofy and doting father, and a funny role for Andrew Wilson (the other Wilson brother), as the team’s beleaguered coach—is not about boys. It’s about girls finding their own bliss (get it?) and supporting each other and being messy and loud and even a little bit nasty in the process. And seriously, what could be better than that?