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.

Into the Wild

Movies based on true stories are usually good movies, though I do tend to ruin the story when I look it up on the Internet beforehand or while I'm watching the movie.

Into the Wild, not to be confused with The Wild cartoon of a couple years ago, is about a young man named Christopher McCandless played by Emile Hirsch (who will be staring as Speed Racer in the new Speed Racer movie) who graduates from college, but has a disdain for societal life. His parents are all about the money and the appearances. This is typical of most Americans. We're about as deep as a puddle.

McCandless is offered membership to the elite Phi Beta Kappa honors society, but refuses it because honors and titles are irrelevant. When he graduates from college, he gets rid of his possessions, donates the remainder of his college fund to charity, and heads west in his trusty Datsun without telling anyone. His ultimate plan is to make it to Alaska and live off of the land.

On the way he meets some strange, but interesting characters. He gets caught up with some hippies, one of whom he starts to develop strong feelings, though she is old enough to be his mother. He skips across country and ends up in South Dakota for a while where he meets Vince Vaughan. Rather than playing dodge ball, McCandless works in a grain mill until Vaughan gets arrested.

Before getting to Alaska, McCandless spends some time in the dessert near a nudist colony and he meets Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook), who, fortunately, is not a nudist. Chris and Mr. Franz become good friends with good reason. You'll have to watch the movie to find out why.

Unfortunately for their relationship, McCandless moves on and heads to Alaska. When he gets there, he finds an old abandoned school bus that was probably used by hunters. He's elated at first by the beauty of the land and being one with nature. However, reality begins to settle in and things aren't as easy as he thought they would be. I'm not sure why. Perhaps college graduates with no food or money or any outdoors training aren't qualified to live in Alaska, one of the harshest places in North America? That's just my guess.

The movie also stars William Hurt as Chris' dad, Marcia Gay Harden as his mother, a very nice looking Jena Malone as his sister and the narrator, Catherine Keener as the hippy woman (40 Year Old Virgin), and Signe Egholm Olsen, who is topless for the entire movie.

Anyway, this is a good movie. It's directed by Sean Penn, if you can believe that. The movie is long - it's 2 1/2 hours in length. However, the movie keeps you interested and the interactions that he has with people are stimulating. I give this movie 4 stars.