In Theaters: Whip It

That classic, quasi-innocent tone is consistent with the film's look, and its setting in a kind of Anytime, Texas. Barrymore is heavily influenced by towel-snappers like Slapshot, and the female camaraderie of Personal Best, and the result is a film that manages to push a lot of nostalgia buttons even as it feels -- as any film featuring a gang of Hurl Scouts might -- pretty modern. It's a shame that she had to kill the buzz of the team dynamic she works so hard to build (the Hurl Scouts are notorious, self-sabotaging losers who, invigorated by Bliss's arrival, actually start following their coach's foolproof plays) with a distractingly lame subplot involving Bliss and her musician crush, a drainpipe cutie with, yep, really cool hair. The endless time they spend Frenching underwater would have been better served exploring the relationships that develop between the women and the outlet that these women -- who, like so many of us, don't need to channel their aggression so much as unleash it -- find in derby's curious brand of butch-femme athleticism.

The scene that best suggests what's missing involves the chief thrill in a film that is elbow-to-elbow with good times: known maniac, Juliette Lewis. Playing Iron Maven, the head of a rival team and a total bitch on wheels, Lewis, one of modern film's most wondrous eccentrics, pockets every scene she's in, including the late confrontation she has with Bliss about having faked her age (the 17-year-old fudged that she was 22 to join the league). Revealing that it took her until the age of 31 to find her way to the track, Maven doesn't quite begrudge the young phenom her future, and yet she can't quite it allow it, either. There are loads of heartache and truth in that moment, one you don't often get to see women exchange on film without calls for a catfight or men beginning to drool (which this film, unfortunately, has plenty of as well).

While its nods to convention and Barrymore's own preoccupation with mannered cuteness and packaged, girly "raunch" stop Whip It! short of the freewheeling self-possession such films need to earn cult status, she comes admirably close. The film moves along at a healthy, popcorn pace, and the derby sequences in particular have an expert velocity -- if anything it's a little too frantic at times. And yet when you start to think Barrymore is just hitting marks, she stops to tease out a moment, like the one described above, or the scene where Bliss confesses to her mom that she gave the musician "everything," with a tenderness that helps the film breathe. It's an excellent sign that Barrymore, in her first film, has discovered the paradox that high achievers know well: only an exceptional level of accomplishment can throw otherwise minor shortcomings into dramatic relief.

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