Movie Grade: A-

DVD Features Grade: B+

Overall Grade: A-

Drew Barrymore finally steps up to the proverbial plate in her directorial debut with Whip It. After a long career of acting, as well as producing Donnie Darko and a plethora of inconsequential films, this was the next logical step. What comes out of it is an indie-styled sports comedy about the breakneck women’s past time of Roller Derby. Apparently this wasn’t just something that gave women in the 70′s and excuse to brutalize each other, but also an excuse for women at any point to brutalize each other. Who better to take up the roll of the underdog than Ellen Page?

After being relatively unnoticed in X-Men: The Last Stand, Page found a cult following by torturing Patrick Wilson in Hard Candy, and eventually received mainstream notoriety as the title character in Juno: now Page is playing the meek yet rebellious Bliss who leaves her life of pageants for roller derby. There she makes friends, meets boy, and finds her niche in this hard hitting sport. Drama with her parents, romance with her boyfriend, comedy with the team and her friend, and action on the rink: Whip It surprisingly has everything you could reasonably ask for in a movie.

Even from a male perspective, this is a really fun film to watch, though the women in the audience will probably have more of an attachment to the characters. After all, this is a women’s sport, but don’t let that fool you: everything above about being brutal was said with complete sincerity. There are some well executed stunts in the film that all deserve praise to the actresses performing them. This is even more impressive being that there were no stunt doubles, and often stuns were shot without any cuts. There are no fancy tricks to make it seem like they are smashing into the wall any harder than they are, it is the actual impact you’re seeing in this one.

The deleted scenes on the Bluray are actually on par with the rest of the film, which is quite a surprise. There are moments, like the scene where they talk about the Chevy Celebrity, that were cut for obvious reasons, but there are other that would have been nice to actually see in the film even though they didn’t have any massive impact. There is one where the girls on the team talk to Bliss about how she shouldn’t date a boy in a band because they turn out to be jerks: even though the statement is ridiculous it would have been a nice piece of foreshadowing for the end result of their relationship.

The interview with writer Shauna Cross was also surprisingly enjoyable. It is a basic interview style feature where she talked about how she was inspired to write Whip It, and where all the little pieces

of the film came from. This might not have been the most interesting feature if it was extended, but running at approximately three minutes, it didn’t over stay its welcome, and still managed to give me a good background of the story.

There isn’t much that has changed since my theatrical review of Whip It: all the same pros with the comedy, drama, and romance; and all the same cons, with eh pool scene. The film doesn’t offend and it fits quite well into the popular indie-style film that people love so much now. It is nice to see that Ellen Page didn’t just play Juno for a second time being that the characters have some similarities. When it comes down it they are very different people, especially regarding the level of confidence in Bliss at the beginning. This might not be a cinematic masterpiece, but it is definitely something you could watch more than once.

Movie Grade: A-

DVD Features Grade: B+

Overall Grade: A-