BEFORE: I had a film about college baseball last week, now I'm down to roller derby? Geez, I guess I already got all the major sports out of the way, now I'm crossing off the minor ones...
Juliette Lewis carries over from "Nerve".
THE PLOT: An indie-rock loving misfit from Bodeen, Texas, finds a way of dealing with her small-town misery after she discovers a roller derby league in nearby Austin.
AFTER: Ha, I struck another school-based film tonight, because the lead character is still in high school and pretends to be over 21 so she can play roller derby. We never see her in class, though, because it's not important to the story, but we do see her and her best friend walking through the halls of the school, so I'm going to count this as another accidental addition to my back-to-school topic. Sometimes I just have to program on instinct and let the themes develop, as they tend to. (Sure, nobody else would consider this a "back-to-school" film, but for me, I have to take them where I find them.)
It's also right on point with yesterday's film, where a teen girl was applying to colleges, just on the cusp of adulthood, and afraid to tell her mother that she wants to go to school in California. Tonight's lead is also afraid to confront her mother, to tell her that she wants to stop entering beauty pageants and play roller derby instead. (This trend started earlier this year with "Mamma Mia", "Lady Bird" and "I, Tonya", what is it about screwed-up teen girls and their tough mothers? Definitely a question I need to bring up again in my year-end wrap-up...)
And "Nerve" also touched on the (supposedly) binary nature of life, how you're either a watcher or a player, and though I don't really subscribe to that concept, it's sort of repeated here, with Bliss deciding that she's tired of just doing activities that she's not really fond of, and finally going to take action and do something she wants to do, just for herself. But it's too bad that this involves both lying about her age AND lying to her parents about where she goes twice a week. She makes up a story about taking an SAT prep class, so hey, no harm done, at least until she fails the SAT or has to explain to her parents how she injured her knee while studying for an exam. There's just no way all this deception can go south, right?
Of course it does - because being on the roller derby team puts her in parties where people are drinking, making out in hot tubs and who knows what else. Still, it's a step into the larger world of adulthood, and nobody ever entered that world without telling their parents a couple of lies, right? It's a rite of passage for teens, more or less. Playing on the "Hurl Scouts" also gets her into her first adult romance, though it doesn't end well. I guess having your heart broken is also a rite of passage for teens, more or less.
But once again, it's a bit simplistic to say that someone can only be one thing, not the other. You can either be in beauty pageants OR play roller derby, there's just no way to do both. Umm, yeah, there could be, but of course the big pageant and the roller derby finals are going to be scheduled for the same day, because movie logic. Thankfully her dad is a sports fan, so he understands her desire to play on a team and express herself in an athletic way - Dad's a watcher, not a player, but at least he gets it and helps her stand up to Mom. But even this is an oversimplification, because there are probably people who like one sport, like football, but that doesn't necessarily mean they like ALL sports.
What I know about roller derby is that players get to choose cool pun-based names for themselves, and there's some kind of national registry that makes sure there aren't two players in different cities using the same pseudonym. So this movie showcases some of the better ones, like "Bloody Holly" and "Eva Destruction", but I wish it could have stayed a bit more on theme - like "Bloody Holly" should be playing on a team where all the names are pop music based (along with "Smashley Simpson"), not on a Girl Scout-themed team, right? (Naturally they'd be called the "Rock and Rollers"...)
Why don't the Hurl Scouts have names that have to do with Girl Scout things, wouldn't that make more sense? Like, I don't know, maybe "Tough Cookie" or "Peanut Butter Patty" or "Savannah Smiles"? "Hurt Me S'More" or "Merit Badge Madge"? Bliss somehow gets the name "Babe Ruthless", which admittedly is a great name, but her father calls her the nickname "Blister" all the time, wouldn't that name have fit her better?
That's not to say that names like "Rosa Sparks" and "Maggie Mayhem" aren't great, I just wanted them to fit in with some kind of theme. I just don't see a connection between skaters named the Manson Sisters and the Girl Scouts, that's all.
It's a strange coincidence that three of my school-based films in the last week share their titles with rock or pop songs - "The Edge of Seventeen" (song by Stevie Nicks), "Everybody Wants Some!!" (song by Van Halen) and now "Whip It" (song by Devo). I'll have to double-check, but I don't think any of those songs were heard in the movies that share their names. No, wait, I'm wrong - that Van Halen song did appear in "Everybody Wants Some!!" and oddly, that movie also featured Devo's "Whip It". But today's movie did not. Hmm, that's weird.
Also starring Ellen Page (last seen in "Smart People"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Into the Wild"), Daniel Stern (last seen in "Breaking Away"), Carlo Alban (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Landon Pigg (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Downsizing"), Zoe Bell (last seen in "The Hateful Eight"), Eve (last seen in "XXX"), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Andrew Wilson (last seen in "The Big Year"), Ari Graynor (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Har Mar Superstar, Rusty Mewha, Eulala Scheel.
RATING: 6 out of 10 thigh bruises
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