And she has to keep her roller-skating life a secret from her parents (Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern), who would not approve.įrom the outside looking in, it's nothing at all earthshaking. Her best friend (Alia Shawkat from 'Arrested Development,' in a fine, subtle performance) is at first happy for her, then jealous. There are complications, of course, set to a good batch of alt-rock songs on the soundtrack.Ī nice-guy love interest (Landon Pigg) gets her head spinning.

Much bruising roller derby action and comedy ensues. So Bliss takes on the nom de skate of Babe Ruthless and soon becomes a star, drawing the ire of her arch-rival, snippy Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis). Inspired, she goes home, digs out her Barbie skates, has a training montage, and joins the underachieving Hurl Scouts, which feature characters such as Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) and Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell). It speaks to her, this funky, tongue-in-cheek sport of fishnet-wearing, bruised and wisecracking skaters. But on a shopping trip to Austin - which is as weird as Bodeen is bland - she finds out about women's roller derby and is soon sneaking out of the house to see it. So she's biding time as a disaffected waitress at the Oink Joint restaurant in Bodeen, Texas (complete with giant pig on the roof). But you can tell by her ironic Stryper T-shirt that that idea's not going to work out.

She's a 17-year-old named Bliss Cavendar, whose mom wants her to be a beauty pageant queen. It stars a pitch-perfect Ellen Page, who's less snarky than she was in 'Juno' but every bit as frank and real. Valente, who’s known for writing The Orphan’s Tales and Fairyland series and has been nominated and won numerous awards, including Time Magazine’s Top 10 Fiction Books in 2012, was inspired to write The Refrigerator Monologues following the death of Gwen Stacy in 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.There isn't much in 'Whip It' that you haven't seen before, but it's still a terrifically engaging girl-power movie with a bit of an edge and a lot of heart. As they tell each other their stories, they discover their inner powers and decide to take back their narratives and write their own. In other words, their stories became “refrigerated” or frozen once they’ve given the men an emotional backstory for the men. RELATED: Amazon Series Dirty Recruits Producers from Catastrophe, Peaky Blindersīased on the novella published by Saga in 2017 and written Catherynne Valente and featuring art by Annie Wu, the series will follow five recently-dead women who meet in the Purgatory known as Deadtown, where they come to the realization that all of their deaths were simply for the service of the superhero men in their lives. Deadline has brought word that Amazon Studios is teaming up with Whip It‘s Shauna Cross to develop Deadtown, an adaptation of the 2017 superhero novella “The Refrigerator Monologues.”

Derby Girl by Shauna Cross