Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Whip It
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 39 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Comedy | Drama
Written by: Shauna Cross
Directed by: Drew Barrymore
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 2, 2009
Running Time: 111 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sexual content including crude dialogue, language and drug material
Starring Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Eve, Jimmy Fallon, Daniel Stern, and Drew Barrymore
A rebellious Texas teen trades in her small town beauty pageant crown for the rowdy world of roller derby. (Fox Searchlight)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
An unreasonably entertaining movie, causing you perhaps to revise your notions about women's Roller Derby, assuming you have any.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Sweet without being sticky and funny without getting silly, Whip It introduces Barrymore as a director with a keen eye, a good ear for tone and an inspired touch with actors.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Barrymore is terrific with her actors, finding moments for even the smallest supporting players.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
It's that happiest of surprises: a multiplex movie that genuinely respects its young audience.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey
What makes Whip It a blast is the action in the rink. What gives Whip It heart is the pathos, pain and mettle-testing elements that accompany any serious athletic competition. It doesn't hurt that its diminutive star is surprisingly athletic and agile on the track.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Peter Brunette
Clicks on so many levels -- heartwarming family story, rough-and-tumble display of grrrl power and a secondary but tender and convincing romance.
Read Full Review >Variety Rob Nelson
Laced with good-natured hipster kitsch and endearingly goofy girl power, director Drew Barrymore's roller-derby dramedy, Whip It, is a gas.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf
Marcia Gay Harden is the picture’s treasure; watching her swell with concern at her daughter’s choices, you understand how hard it is to let go.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Barrymore’s casting choices are intrinsic to the success of the film. Lewis, under her rink name, Iron Maven, hasn’t had this meaty a role in maybe 15 years, while Wilson as the team’s shaggy male coach is a hoot to watch. Harden and Stern, as Bliss’ parents, create fleshed-out characters instead of lazy depictions of the paper tigers that grown-ups usually are in teens’ stories.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
What Barrymore brings is good-natured, girl-powered subversion, a sense of when to flaunt clichés and when to flip them over the rails.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Whip It (which takes its name from a play in which skaters hold hands and form a human whip to propel the last skater forward) is heaven on wheels.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Most crucially, Barrymore encourages Page to just let herself go. The sight of her making her way up residential streets in a pair of Barbie roller skates or screaming “Marco’’ in a game of Marco Polo is simply joyful.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Barrymore’s direction is generous to a fault, and there are times when you wish Whip It simply moved faster, on and off the track. It succeeds because of the emotional rather than comic payoffs.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Whip It is completely predictable from the first frame. It also is ridiculously, utterly entertaining.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Boisterous, cloying, simultaneously raunchy and innocent, hip and klutzy.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli
For all the hip checks and bloody noses, it doesn't have a mean bone in its body.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Arriving on the nastier heels of the horror comedy "Jennifer's Body," Whip It plays like that movie's more wholesome twin, delivering the same jolt of anarchic guerrilla-girl empowerment, only with a far less threatening disposition.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
You might, nonetheless, want to see this movie, even -- or maybe especially -- if you have seen “Billy Elliot” or “Bend It Like Beckham.” Familiarity is not always a bad thing, and if the script, by Shauna Cross, piles sports movie and coming-of-age touchstones into a veritable cairn of clichés, the cast shows enough agility and conviction to make them seem almost fresh.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Page is softer than in "Hard Candy" and "Juno." Without Diablo Cody comebacks, she’s even more marvelous.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
At moments, especially in the conflicted intimacy between Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern as Bliss' parents, Barrymore shows real directing chops. But in Whip It she's painting inside the box.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The movie ended just in time. Any more of it, and I'd have been crying uncle. Or maybe, given the grrrl-power of it all, crying aunt. This is one supposedly contrarian film that rouses the counter-contrarian in you.
Read Full Review >New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott
The result is a film that is equal parts fluff and tough.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Jessica Baxter
Whip It doesn’t just refer to whipping around the track or whipping ass. It’s about a girl who must whip herself into shape and grow up.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The derby sequences are just OK, and the conflict between Bliss and her uncomprehending parents, played by Marcia Gay Harden and (a fine) Daniel Stern, is so predictable that you wish someone had rolled onto the set to whip it into shape.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
It’s virtually impossible to hate the film, but Barrymore’s presence behind the camera suggests more calculation than vision; like a lot of actors who direct, she tends to the performances, but her style never rises above bland proficiency.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The movie is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut (she also plays fellow Hurl Scout Smashley Simpson), and it's clear she's more attuned to grrrlishness than real athletic power.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Robert Wilonsky
Highlights: Andrew Wilson as the roller girls' coach (ah, so there's the Wilson brother who can act) and the roller-derby vets (played especially well by Juliette Lewis and Kristen Wiig) about whom we learn just enough to wish the movie was focused on them instead.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
At its best, this could have been a passable distraction and at its worst, it could have been unwatchable. Barrymore manages to bring it in somewhere in between those extremes.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Has such a sweet spirit that it's easy enough to let its flaws sail by.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 39 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mary M gave it a9:
Unexpectedly entertaining and real. I'm as old (probably) as the "mom' in the film, but I was able to identify in some way to both the daughter and the mom. Well done, Drew!
Steve C gave it a10:
I know and i am good friends with one of the actors in the movie. So its fucking awesome
Brandon Z gave it a10:
This movie greatly exceeded my expectations. I loved everything about it. Great performances all around, great story, and a great script. It may have been a little cliche, but it just felt real to me. It was really a really funny and heartfelt movie, I laughed and cried way too much.
Jacob I gave it an8:
Very Funny!
Chad S. gave it a7:
Bliss Cavendar(Ellen Page) exercises her freedom of choice, and she chooses roller derby. Raised by a mama who is grooming her for a life of tiaras and parade floats, Bliss wants to knock people out with brawn and stamina, not beauty and poise. "Whip It" is a satirical, but offsetting film that messes with Texas, small-town Texas, which shares the same tonal melange of smugness and compassion towards its rural characters as Mike Judge's animated series "King of the Hill". The film may view a woman like Brooke Cavendar(Marcia Gay Harden) as inherently ridiculous, but it stops short of mocking this reactionary lady. For example, when Brooke takes her daughter shopping for boots, she becomes the butt of a joke about unworldly hayseeds, in which this paegant mom coos like a southern debutante over the bongs she mistakenly identifies as "pretty lamps". Instead of dragging out the joke about a straight arrow mother's ignorance over drug paraphernalia, Brooke quickly recovers, and diagnoses her environs as being a "head shop". Like Peggy Hill(voiced by Kathy Najimy) from the cancelled Fox series, Brooke Cavendar is allowed to keep her dignity. Granting that beauty paegants are a de-evolutionary step for womankind, in which the Kings of Leon song "Knocked Up" is used as a predictor of Bliss' narrowing future of being a mother and homemaker when this ironic contestant crosses the stage with her blue do, roller derby seems equally narrow in scope, and may lead the girl down a path that's no less middling than the one she's leaving. After all, in roller derby, you're just rolling around in circles.
Enzo P. gave it a7:
Whip It is a funny comedy that shows Bliss (roller derby name Babe Ruthless) finding her passion and what she wants to do in life. Kind of surprised that someone would want to roller derby for the rest of your life know its practically illegal and of course her parents hate Babe's new hobby. I don't like this quote very much but I think I should say it. 'It's just a movie.' None of this will probably happen to you. Also some people say it is more then a movie if they like it a lot. But this isn't a masterpiece. Drew Barrymore coming of her best acting performance on an HBO series Grey Gardens Drew takes on directing a film. Before she started working on the film she had no idea what to do or what you were supposed to do. So she took some lessons and she was on her way. Very good debut and I wonder if she is going to make other films. Overall it's a good film not perfect but looking forward if Drew will make another film.
Robert T. gave it a10:
Ellen Page took her tyoecast of "The Wierd Girl" to a new level. I thought this film would be just like Juno without the pregnancy and drama (Juno is my favorite movie.) But it wasn't all of the actor and actresses did an outstanding job. Ellen Page's work really stuck out to me. Especially the aforementioned typecast weird girl role. It's like she was still that role but a different better version. The film its self was very good. The plot and camera work as well. It was a tad predictable but over all the film has been the best of this year so far.
