Whip It!

When I saw that a movie titled Whip It! was coming out I figured it was a movie about the 1980's band Devo who was known as one of the one-hit wonders known for their song Whip It!. However, this movie had nothing to do with Devo. Nor did anyone in the movie have a red plastic flower pot on their head.

Whip It! stars Ellen Page, the young girl who seems to be type-cast as the disenfranchised teenager of her generation, though she's actually 23 years old. You'll remember her as the pregnant girl from Juno, the one that you wondered why in the hell she had sex with Michael Cera. But I digress.

In Whip It! (let me add that typing the name of this movie is driving me crazy because it ends in a punctuation mark and the auto correct wants to capitalize the next letter), Bliss is a young high schooler whose mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is living vicariously through her and pushing her to be in beauty contests, which Bliss could not care less about. Bliss finds a flyer about joining a roller derby in nearby Austin, Texas. She sneaks out of town and joins the roller derby despite being too young. And to her surprise, she's really good. What happens when her disingenuous commitment to beauty pageantry and her secret life as a roller derby collide?

Whip It! Is directed by Drew Barrymore, who also stars in the movie, along with Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis (sorry, that woman is getting nasty looking!), and Jimmy Fallon. Lower on the billing is Daniel Stern who plays Bliss' father. You'll remember him as the narrator of The Wonder Years.

Whip It! is 2 hours long and is rated PG-13 for some mild sexual content, crude dialog, language, drug use, and some violence (it is a roller-derby!).

I really enjoyed the movie, though I thought the middle was a bit long. It could have been a better movie if it was about 20 minutes shorter. However, the movie made me laugh and that's important. I liked it enough to give it 4 stars.

Juno

Nominated for Best Picture, but not winning, Juno is about a young high school girl who gets pregnant and decides to put her baby up for adoption - a most admirable gesture in my opinion.

The potty mouthed Juno, played by Ellen Page, informs her father and step-mother that she got pregnant by Paulie Bleaker (Michael Cera), one of the runners on the cross country team. He's not exactly who you would expect to get a girl pregnant in high school. He's a better candidate to be one of the people that I hung out with (was I really that nerdy???)

In giving her baby up for adoption, Juno goes out to find the perfect parents. He meets Mark and Venessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). They have that querky relationship - you know, the kind where she's a freak about everything and seems to be in charge despite her own failures and neurosis.

Just when everything seems to be perfect, Mark changes the plans and leaves Juno in distress. Now shee needs to decide if she will still allow Venessa to adopt the baby or find new parents.

The movie is very comical. There's lot's of bad words, some adult situations, like the abortion center scene, but nothing too bad. We all knew a girl like Juno and a boy like Paulie. And we now all know a woman like Venessa and a guy like Mark. It is very easy to relate to this movie.

Overall, I give this movie 4 stars. I could easily see myself watching it again. It's only 92 minutes long, so if you put your kids to bed at 9pm, you'll be in bed before the 1o o'clock news is over on Channel 45. This movie lost out to No Country For Old Men, a movie that forgot to include the ending. I think this movie would have been a better choice for the award.