Review of Whip It (2009) by Chads. — 03 Oct 2009
Bliss Cavendar(Ellen Page) exercises her freedom of choice, and she chooses roller derby. Raised by a mama who is grooming her for a life of tiaras and parade floats, Bliss wants to knock people out with brawn and stamina, not beauty and poise.
"Whip It" is a satirical, but offsetting film that messes with Texas, small-town Texas, which shares the same tonal melange of smugness and compassion towards its rural characters as Mike Judge's animated series "King of the Hill".
The film may view a woman like Brooke Cavendar(Marcia Gay Harden) as inherently ridiculous, but it stops short of mocking this reactionary lady. For example, when Brooke takes her daughter shopping for boots, she becomes the butt of a joke about unworldly hayseeds, in which this paegant mom coos like a southern debutante over the bongs she mistakenly identifies as "pretty lamps".
Instead of dragging out the joke about a straight arrow mother's ignorance over drug paraphernalia, Brooke quickly recovers, and diagnoses her environs as being a "head shop". Like Peggy Hill(voiced by Kathy Najimy) from the cancelled Fox series, Brooke Cavendar is allowed to keep her dignity.
Granting that beauty paegants are a de-evolutionary step for womankind, in which the Kings of Leon song "Knocked Up" is used as a predictor of Bliss' narrowing future of being a mother and homemaker when this ironic contestant crosses the stage with her blue do, roller derby seems equally narrow in scope, and may lead the girl down a path that's no less middling than the one she's leaving.
After all, in roller derby, you're just rolling around in circles.
This review of Whip It (2009) was written by Chads. on 03 Oct 2009.
Whip It has generally received positive reviews.
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