By Greg Vellante
Correspondent

“Whip It” is a delightful, inspired and heartwarming journey of a girl in the process of finding her own individual happiness.

Caught in the small-town choke hold of her home in Bodeen, Texas, Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) finds herself endlessly competing in beauty pageants, fulfilling a lost dream of her mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden). Upon discovering a roller derby league in nearby Austin, Bliss lies to her parents and joins.

It’s a classic tale of one breaking out of their shell and testing the boundaries, and first time director Drew Barrymore handles material at once sensitive and hilarious with relative ease. Barrymore, who also stars as a derby member with the alias Smashley Simpson, enforces a fervent directorial passion into her first work behind the camera, transmitting an effortless joy from script to screen, screen to audience.

Page as Bliss, the young girl straying from her societal and, more important, daughterly expectations, is a golden ticket among an equally enriched cast. Kristen Wiig, typically zany and awkwardly funny, takes on a more subtle role and perhaps offers the most enlightened information of all the characters when she states the simple phrase “Be Your Own Hero,” the film’s tagline, which rings true throughout the movie.

Barrymore herself is fantastically funny in the slapstick role of Smashley: constantly finding her character with a broken nose, bruises, and a bad attitude, all of which induce the highest amounts of laughs. Daniel Stern, finally back in the cinematic spotlight, is wonderfully original as Bliss’s father. Jimmy Fallon has his ephemeral moments as a derby announcer, and the sweet-faced Alia Shawkat is quite enjoyable as Bliss’s best friend Pash.

But the top honor must go to Harden as a mother dealing with an inability to recover from an unfulfilling past, combined with the discovery of a rebellious daughter disapproving of her motherly methods. The tension yet equal chemistry between Page and Harden illustrates a powerful mother/daughter relationship that knows no bounds, and Barrymore paints this picture with emotion, vehemence and realism.

An outstanding directorial debut from Barrymore, “Whip It” is a film that works on nearly every level. It provides equal amounts of humor, action, story, characters and substance. It supplies a generous amount of laughter, while all the same creating cringe-worthy scenes of insult and injury. The characters are able to make us laugh, cry, think and relate.

From a simple concept of finding your own individuality, to the convoluted conception of young love and the increasingly intricate study of the bonds and breaks between a mother and daughter, “Whip It” is more than a mere comedy, drama, or standard motion picture. It’s a wholesome, honest, and authentic glimpse into the breaking away of a teenage girl from suffocation to what her own name implies — Bliss.

The late John Hughes, rest in peace, would applaud.

MOVIE REVIEW
‘Whip It’
3 1/2 out of 4 stars