Whip It

Bring me a box of Tagalongs, pronto!

Grade: B –

Director: Drew Barrymore

Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, and Drew Barrymore

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Ok, so it’s not exactly Juno on roller skates. Still, Whip It borrows heavily – like Smart People before it and undoubtedly many films after it – on typecasting Ellen Page as the spunky, whip-smart teen. While we look forward to Page expanding her role horizons, one thing is certain: She sure is great at playing a spunky, whip-smart teen.

While Whip It is entertaining in its own rite, Page carries the film on her pubescent back, overcoming numerous shortcomings brought on by a clichéd screenplay and some expected – and mostly excusable – floundering by debut director Drew Barrymore (who also costars).

Barrymore’s mistakes are not in spirit. Her film about a warehouse roller derby league in Austin, Texas treats its milieu with respect, presenting the all-female derby subculture not as an oddity but as misunderstood at worst and wicked awesome at best. Page is the treacly-named Bliss Cavender, a 17-year-old misfit who finds her calling in the roller rink under the moniker ‘Babe Ruthless' as a member of the rough-and-tumble Hurl Scouts, not in the assortment of teenage beauty pageants her reproving mom (Marcia Gay Harden) sticks her in.

While the film is imbued in female empowerment, Barrymore and screenwriter Shauna Cross (adapting her novel “Derby Girl”) conspicuous cast women – Bliss’ mom, her stuck-up high school friends, her roller rivals – as the antagonists. Meanwhile, men are generally shone in a sympathetic or even heroic light, including the derby team’s long-suffering coach (Andrew Wilson) and Bliss’ henpecked dad (Daniel Stern).

Most of the cast is up to task, including Alia Shawkat as Bliss’ best-friend and Kristen Wiig, who reigns in her sometimes annoying SNL persona for a subdued but hilarious performance. On the other hand, Barrymore’s excessive focus on BFF Jimmy Fallon as the derby’s carnival barker emcee grows wearisome well before his umpteenth pun falls flat.

Indeed, much of the humor in Whip It mirrors the same overbroad comedy Barrymore herself usually parades onscreen. A food fight, seriously? And, one scene in which Bliss’ dad shares a Fosters with his teenage daughter while they watch football on TV in the back of his van seems creepy coming from Barrymore given her well-chronicled history of childhood substance abuse.

The storyline itself is the same Bad News Bears entree mixed with a heavy dollop of Bend It Like Beckham and served with a passé boy-meets-girl side dish. And, while Barrymore wisely provides center stage to the action sequences, they often come across as a bit too choreographed.

Still, Whip It’s message overshadows its execution. And, before she turns the next page in her career, it is nice to see that Ellen Page doesn’t need Diablo Cody’s jabberwocky to carry a movie.

Neil Morris

Juno

If you saw "Hard Candy,"

you'd better hope I'm 19.

Grade: B +
Starring: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 32 minutes

Having already blazed a trail into news, politics, sports, and gossip, it was just a matter of time before the blogosphere established a beachhead in the world of cinema. Twenty-nine year-old Diablo Cody (birth name Brook Busey-Hunt) already had a loyal following for her Pussy Ranch weblog and 2006 memoir Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper before penning Juno, a coming-of-age dramedy about a teenager’s unplanned pregnancy. Cody’s whip-smart script not only tackles touchy life lessons without sanctimony but also finds hilarity as a so-called “teenage comedy” without the crutch of defiled desserts or an endless string of profane Apatow-isms.

Some may decry, with some justification, Cody’s rapid-fire, Gen-Y argot as too “Sundancy,” more concerned with movie-speak than people-speak. This critique, however, ignores that her prose is less concerned with concocting a template for verbal communication than establishing a breezy, vehicle for character definition and development.

Of course, it helps when that prose is being delivered by Ellen Page, who, at age 20, has already developed into the actress everyone once thought Christina Ricci would become (Ricci’s underappreciated turn in Black Snake Moan notwithstanding). Although Page’s breakout performance in 2005’s Hard Candy seemed too much like an acting school exercise, it still flashed the raw potential that blossoms here in the hands of Cody and director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking).

After seducing her high school class/band-mate Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, again effectively channeling the same nebbish persona found in Superbad and Arrested Development), the gravid Juno (Page) must decide the fate of her unborn child. However, Juno is not a jeremiad against teenage pregnancy, pre-martial sex, or abortion, as some have suggested. Rather, as the self-styled “smartest person in the room,” Juno’s overarching journey is the realization of her own immaturity - her witty bluster is not a byproduct of self-esteem but rather an aegis shielding her lack of it.

Even cleverer is that the audience joins Juno in discovering the true nature of supporting characters who defy genre strictures by being, well, so normal. Juno’s Army-vet dad (J.K. Simmons) turns out a supportive father-figure who fancifully considers himself his daughter’s best friend. Similarly, instead of some shrewish hag, Juno’s stepmother (Allison Janney) leaps to her aid on several occasions. And, Paulie is not some callous dude who flees Juno’s side in her time of need, but instead an equally overwhelmed teenager who stands ready to provide as much love and understanding as he is capable and Juno is willing to receive.

More provocative still are Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), the childless couple Juno chooses to adopt her baby. Vanessa is initially cast as an uptight suburbanite, while Juno launches a platonic kinship with Mark, spending afternoons with him playing guitar, listening to Sonic Youth and The Melvins, and measuring the aesthetic merits of schlock horror flicks. However, Cody eventually flips our perceptions of each character – the Apostle Paul’s admonishment for men to “put away childish things” springs to mind – and further demonstrates Juno’s overarching theme that maturity is not merely a reluctant acceptance of responsibility, but instead the reclassification of cool.

Neil Morris