Script Review: Whip It! by Shauna Cross
[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]
I’ll bet you’re wondering why I veered off the beaten path of reviewing a script on Monday for a movie that’ll be released later in the week. When compiling notes on which movies are released when, I somehow got the impression that Whip It! doesn’t hit theatres until October 9th. Turns out it comes out tomorrow, and since this is a rare positive review, I figured I should get it out sooner rather than later. I apologize for not realizing this until the day before the movie comes out.
The alternate downside: I don’t have any reviews prepared for next week. So I guess I’ll toss out a surprise script review I’ve kept in my back pocket for awhile. By which I mean a review for a movie that already came out (and flopped) that I started reviewing, then got distracted and never finished. Now, on to the review…
This script surprised the shit out of me. I have to admit, I prejudged it based on the fact that I am a misogynist bastard trying my damndest to keep women down by spraying them with a heady coat of sticky testosterone-like fluid, preventing them from making it in a man’s world. But, seriously, folks, here’s how it went down: a few years ago, IFC produced a fantastic series called The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, starring Laura Kightlinger (who created the show and wrote many of the episodes) and Nicholle Tom as bottom-feeding wannabe screenwriters trying to make it in Hollywood. One running gag was Jackie’s pet project, a story about a Depression-era roller derby queen (modeled after her aunt) that Jackie frequently hyped but never actually wrote. (It reached a point where the idea was actually stolen because of this combination of hype and laziness.) IFC unceremoniously canceled the show during the writers’ strike, when they opted instead to produce improv-heavy shows that didn’t have WGA affiliation. Fucking dicks.
If you had a problem following that, allow me to distill my thesis to its essence: from now until the day I die, I will laugh derisively at any screenplay about roller-derby queens. Kightlinger did such a great job at portraying this as a ridiculous idea, it’s hard not to jeer and mock when Hollywood takes seriously an idea first presented as a somewhat horrible idea in a satire of the movie business. I fully admit this is my own problem, and I’m working through it with rigorous, twice-weekly psychotherapy sessions. Until then, it will take quite a lot for a screenplay about a roller-derby queen to win me over; fortunately for society as a whole, Whip It! is the only one of those that has ever landed on my desk. I, unfortunately, was not working as a reader when the remake of Rollerball circulated.
With that preamble out of the way, let me tell you that Whip It! is actually…really fucking good. Shauna Cross, adapting from her novel (which I’ve not read and, honestly, probably never will), doesn’t make the usual adaptation mistakes of overstuffing too much material into too little space or, worse, chopping so much of the novel out that the truncated screenplay barely makes sense (I’m looking at you, Dreamcatcher). The script has a lot of characters and subplots to balance, but Cross does an expert job of keeping all the plates in the air while driving the narrative to a satisfying conclusion.
“Satisfying” is not to be confused with “unpredictable,” because this is a studio-friendly coming-of-age chick flick. It hits a number of familiar beats, but Cross takes novel approaches to these moments, making them feel fresh and believable instead of hackneyed and overdone.
The story follows 16-year-old Bliss, whose overbearing mother (Brooke) has forced her into a life of pageantry. Looking to both rebel and find her own way (there’s a difference), Bliss sees an ad for a female roller-derby group and feels compelled to check it out. She drags her best friend, Pash, and when she sees the speed and violence with which the teams compete, Bliss decides to audition for a team. Both the competing girls and the teams have names that range from stupid (Smashley Simpson, Paris Killton) to clever (Robin Graves, Moxie Cotton). Bliss develops an instant rapport with both Malice in Wonderland and indie-rocker Oliver. For the first time in her life, Bliss feels like she belongs, despite the taunting of obnoxious skater Dinah Might.
Much of the plot combines the beats of a sports movie (Bliss is placed on the losingest team, she’s coached on how to use her anger to win and leads the team to success — she’s very angry, thanks to her mother and rival pageant contestants) with a coming-of-age story (Bliss’s ultimate goal is to achieve freedom from her domineering mother). There’s drama between Bliss and Pash (Pash is quietly jealous of the time Bliss spends elsewhere, but she’s also concerned for Bliss’s safety), between Bliss and Oliver (Malice warns her about dating guys in bands, but she doesn’t listen), between Bliss and vindictive Dinah Might (Dinah learns Bliss is only 16, which means she can’t participate without parental permission, which she doesn’t have), and between both parents.
I suppose the big surprise, and one of the things that makes this script so endearing, is in the way it doesn’t paint Bliss’s parents as generic villains. Brooke is genuinely clueless about her daughter’s disdain for pageantry and only “forces” her to participate out of love and a misguided belief that Bliss is getting something out of the experience. Bliss’s father, Earl, gives a subtle double meaning to the script’s title. His love for Bliss prompts the first — and possibly only — time he stands up to his wife. He’s more disappointed in the deception than the danger of the sport; as he puts it, he’d have no problem letting a son play football. Both Brooke and Earl are forced to the unsettling realization that what they want for their daughter — not to mention what they want their daughter to want — doesn’t sync up with who she’s become. All of this is handled exceptionally well.
In the past, I’ve bitched about certain movies where every character — no matter the age, gender, ethnicity, or background — sounds like some sort of bizarre, artificial alien life form who learned English by watching Valley Girl and the Police Academy movies. Whip It! is refreshingly free of such annoying eccentricities: the teenagers sound like… Well, not exactly like teenagers, but at least they don’t sound like Nobel laureates or jive-talking robots. The adults sound like adults. More than that, each character has his or her own voice. It reached a point where I didn’t really have to look at the character name to know who was speaking to whom. Although the script has a strong wit, Cross never tries too hard to force the humor. Well done!
There you go. A strong script with an ace cast and Drew Barrymore at the helm. Okay, I’m actually not sure about that last part, but a screenplay and ensemble this good would have a hard time fucking it up even with Ed Wood behind the camera. I apologize for comparing Drew Barrymore to Ed Wood; I have no idea how she’ll do as a director, though.
Posted by Stan on October 1, 2009 10:17 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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