Whip It is a fun, uplifting movie. It has a great message about individuality and following your heart in life, and about the need for parents to let go of the desire to control the lives and choices of their children. The performances are solid across the board (Drew did good work with her direction) and the soundtrack is really good (even if its application in the movie is a little uneven.) Plus, by the end of the film you really start enjoying the sport of roller derby, which tells me that the film definitely did something right.

Ellen Page is an actress I really want to like. She looks great and has a great voice, but I just don’t know what I think of her acting. To me, she was kind of out-classed by the actress playing her best friend (Alia Shawkat,) who showed a wonderful ability to project a wide variety of emotions and invite you into her character – with Ellen Page, I never forget I’m watching someone “playing a teenager.”  I was discussing this with my wife, and she agreed with me, noting that Page’s role in Juno was not really counter-evidence because it was a fabulously written role and her energy perfectly matched the energy of the character – occasionally an actor’s tics will mesh perfectly with a role and create magic, even though they are not the best actor in the world (William L Petersen in To Live and Die in LA comes to mind.) But I will say this: I enjoyed Ellen Page in this role – Drew even got a pretty good performance out of her!

By the way, Juliette Lewis is FAB in this movie.

The film is fun, inspirational, touching, pretty well-written, has good music, flows well, has good consistent performances, and you walk out of the theater with something positive. How many films can you say that about this year?

Go see it!!!