Who knew what to expect from Drew Barrymore after He's Just Not That Into You, a feminist snuff flick released earlier this year that Barrymore executive produced and in which she had a sort of boutique role. While her instincts as a producer are erratic, having fastened her to everything from Donnie Darko to Duplex, for a lot of Drew-watchers, He's Just Not That Into You was a dealbreaker; for years we have been watching her amass enough power to get interesting projects made, and waiting for her to use that power to further what seemed like a progressive agenda. Instead we got a pack of beautiful, sniveling grown women jockeying for pole position in one of the most painfully retro films of the year; had I slumped any further in my seat I would have been licking Skittles goo off the floor. Alas, it seemed Barrymore the businesswoman/free-spirited artist had lost to Barrymore the boy-crazy, seriously uncool ditz in the battle for aesthetic supremacy.
After wrestling back some favor with by far her best performance to date as Little Edie in the HBO production of Grey Gardens, Barrymore resurfaces with Whip It, her adaptation of Shauna Cross's young adult novel, Derby Girl. It is the actress's directorial debut, and the choice speaks volumes: the story of Bliss Cavendar, a small town Texan who rejects the debutante circuit her mother is intent on in favor of the roller derby scene she discovers during a trip to Austin, combines Barrymore's purported interest in girl power narratives and much more evident interest in boy-catching eyeliner, cute boys with really cool haircuts, and posing as a sort of rock and roll rebel -- which boys love, by the way! Which would come out on top this time?
Well, it's a wash -- a sweaty, funny, highly entertaining wash. Ellen Page, the pride of Halifax, plays Bliss as a sort of introvert-in-waiting, expanding on the subtleties she brought to her potentially one-note lead role in Juno. After an opening sequence in which we see Bliss appeasing her mother (played by Marcia Gay Harden) by taking her place among a room of white-gowned debs obediently repeating truisms about their hopes and dreams, Barrymore quickly moves the story into derby mode: Bliss tries out for the league on a lark, drawn in by the admittedly alluring spectacle of three girls gliding into an Austin thrift shop to drop off some flyers. Cross, who also wrote the script, gets some classic one-liners into the film's mix: "I give my parents straight A's, I get freedom," says Bliss's best friend (played by Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat), as she jacks the family car for some out-of-town mischief. "I'm Bliss, but I could change that," Bliss says to Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), knees practically clanging in the face of the Hurl Scouts' collective aura of badassery.
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.