10-15-09 Whip It

***UPDATE: The Phanton of the Opera will be shown at the Wichita Public Library Central Branch (not the Orpheum)****

Three noncommercial movie programs between now and next Wednesday, all a little peculiar. Friday the 16th features the last showing of the Surrealfilm and Art Exhibit at the Commerce Gallery at 508 South Commerce, at 7. Then jump to the usual Blank Page gallery series, Death Pedal, another bicycle movie showing daredevil cyclers - not motor cycles, bicycles - behaving foolishly but fun to watch, Sunday at 7. And next Wednesday at 7, the Wichita Public Library will show Lon Chaney's original silent Phantom of the Opera with local organist Brett Valliant improvising the musical score, and if you've never seen a silent movie on a big screen with musical score, you owe it to yourself to grab a rare opportunity to do so. That's surreal shorts at the Commerce Gallery Friday at 7, crazy bicycle pedlars in Death Pedal at the Blank Page Sunday, and the Phantom of the Opera at the Wichita Public Library, all at 7.

And commercially, I hope you like Whip It better than I did; the Associated Press reviewer and the three reviewers cited by The Week magazine evidently did, and I was told it was almost certainly good for a third week starting tomorrow in Wichita, though nothing guaranteed. Reviewers generally seem to credit it with cheerful optimism, unshrill feminism, good-hearted comedy, and generally uplifting of audience spirits, which would certainly seem to be enough. I'm in favor of Drew Barrymore, who has had a rough life and is doing her first job as a director, and Ellen Page because she has incredible acting talent, and the supporting cast includes such upcomers as Kirsten Wiig and Jimmy Fallon and such old reliables as Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern and Juliette Lewis, and roller derby should have been easy to photograph and full of action.

But Whip It didn't much get me. The action was too heavily edited and unimaginative, and didn't seem to top anything, just happening without much dramatic context or buildup; it may be that Barrymore needed more stunt people to make things really spectacular. I used to find roller derby full of fun and action, but this time I found it difficult to share Ellen Page's enthusiasm for it, and the story depends on our doing that, because, as is the movie custom, she risks parental relations and close friendships for it.

It isn't just the expected comic action I missed. The cast is satisfactory, but generally uninspired. Page and mother Marcia Gay Harden have some good moments in their conflicts, and Daniel Stern has the advantage of the best-written part as a father not emotionally involved enough to be conflicted but enough to be realistically inconsistent between devotion to wife and devotion to daughter; Juliette Lewis turns out to be not the villain I would ordinarily expect; and relations between players and friends are realistic and attractive. But the script, while it skirts stereotypes in a lot of ways, is so close to the standard that it needs something extraordinary to become exciting, and there's nothing extraordinary present.

Without recommending greater length, I would suggest that there should have been more of a buildup to Page's debut as a skater, and a good deal more about ruthlessness, which is mentioned prominently but never developed in detail as a theme, the problem of keeping roller-derbying secret while carrying bruises of a remarkable nature should have led to more comedy.

I hope I am not just showing my age when I recommend a moratorium on food fights as comedy devices but express appreciation for a love story restrained enough not to make the characters seem passion mad; there are not a lot of places where I appreciate Whip It's realistic restraint.

Faint praise, but it's certainly better than the bigger budgeted and more promoted Fame.