See It or Skip It: Whip It

Model to actress, child star to leading man, actress to singer; Hollywood crossovers are hard to pull off. While Drew Barrymore was able to dive into the realm of producing with both successes (Charlie’s Angel, Never Been Kissed, Donnie Darko) and failures (He’s Just Not That Into You, Fever Pitch), her first attempt as a director is kind of like watching pubescent Haley Joel Osment in Secondhand Lions; you remember all the potential and adoration you once had for the young star but cringe at the awkward, immature, ungainly mess unfolding before you. 

Whip It, Barrymore’s directorial debut, stars Ellen Page as Bliss, a covertly rebellious Texas teen forced into pageants by her over weaning mother (Marcia Gay Harden, doing her damndest to turn a poorly written caricature into flesh and blood) who splits her time between slinging swine at a mindless waitressing job and counting the seconds until she can break out of her Podunk hometown. That is, until she catches a glimpse of some local roller derby girls and becomes enraptured with the idea of joining their clan; all tattoos, miniskirts and Manic Panic dye jobs.

Bliss, knighted “Babe Ruthless”, joins the Hurl Scouts and finds a tribe of kindred spirits, roll-models (go with the pun, people) she can look up to like Smashlee Simpson (Barrymore, pulling double duty when she should really be focusing behind the camera), Rosa Sparks (rapper Eve, proving the difficulty-of-crossover point again), Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell, best known as Uma Thurman’s stunt double in the Kill Bill films) and Maggie Mayhem (SNL’s Kristen Wiig who is surprisingly multi-dimension while most of the cast falls into flat cliches). Ignoring a weak romantic subplot where Bliss becomes involved with an aspiring rock musician named Oliver (Landon Pigg), which Page, in all her asexual glory, is hard pressed to pull off, the film’s main focus is on the rivalry of the Hurl Scouts and their biggest competition, led by Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis giving one of the film’s best performances), and the tenuous balance Bliss must maintain between her suffocating small town life and dreams of a big, wilder world.

Barrymore set out to create what seems like a smaller, edgier Charlie’s Angels; a world where women are tough and sexy and throwing ‘bows is just as funny as it is awesome. The problem is she never gets complete control over ex-derby girl Shauna Cross’ script. Like a child on their first pair of skates, Whip It is a wobbly, bruised, uncoordinated effort that never truly finds its footing.

Skip it.