Whip It

2009 movie written by Shauna Cross and directed by Drew Barrymore.

The film stars Ellen Page as a 17-year old reluctant beauty pageant contestant named Bliss Cavendar in Bodeen, Texas, who discovers and falls in love with the Austin rollerderby circuit. She goes to roller derby tryouts and gets selected for the Hurl Scouts, the worst team in the league. But with Bliss's amazing speed and coach Razor's playbook, they might just be able to challenge the Holy Rollers, the top team in the league, and maybe even win the championship.

Not to be confused with the song of the same name.

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Tropes used in Whip It include:

• Actor Allusion: Maggie tells Bliss (Ellen Page) that having a kid changes everything. Bliss smirks in response.
• Artistic License Geography: The film supposedly takes place in the Austin, Texas area in late-October/early-November, yet the trees are still green and no one is seen dressing warmly (Bliss even takes off her shirt while outside in the morning air, and suffers no visible discomfort).
  • And the funny part? It actually was partially filmed in the Austin area--just not around the time of year that the plot is set.
  • Truth in Television: Austin usually is still fairly warm in late October/early November, and the leaves usually don't start changing color or falling until Thanksgiving or so. That said, just because it's warm doesn't mean people in Austin don't bundle up. At least in Houston, everyone is bundled up once it's below 75.
• Auto Erotica / Don't Come a-Knockin': Subverted. Bliss sees her dad's van rocking, and hears him yelling "YES! YES!", but it turns out he's watching a really exciting football game on a small TV in the van.
• Badass Beard: Razor.
• Beauty Pageant: Bliss's mother was a contestant when she was younger and makes both Bliss and her younger sister Shania compete.
• Big Game: The championship match at the end.
• Billy Elliot Plot: Inverted. Bliss wants to do roller derby, but her mother wants her to participate in beauty pageants.
• Bittersweet Ending: Bliss breaks up with her cheating boyfriend, and then loses the last jam of the game to Iron Maven, but she also finally wins Maven's respect on the track and reconciles with her family.
• Bland-Name Product: "Without the Bluebonnet factory, this town wouldn't exist." It's a reference to Blue Bell Creameries, an ice cream manufacturer based in Brenham, Texas.^[1]
• Boisterous Bruiser: Smashley Simpson.
• California Doubling: Aside from a few scenes filmed in Austin, the majority of the movie features Michigan doubling for East Central Texas.
• Casanova Wannabe: Johnny Rocket.
• Coming of Age Story
• Contrived Coincidence: The Bluebonnet Ball is the very same evening as the championship roller derby match.
• Cut Himself Shaving: When her mother sees a roller derby bruise, Bliss says that she "fell at work."
• Dawson Casting: Twenty-two year old Ellen Page playing seventeen year old Bliss (who pretends to be twenty-two in order to get on the roller derby team, hilariously enough).
• Deadpan Snarker: Both Pash and Razor.
• Everything Is Big in Texas
• Food Fight: Iron Maven flicks a french fry at Bliss. Bliss retaliates with some banana creme pie. Maven dumps a chocolate milkshake on Bliss' head. It escalates from there.
• Fragile Speedster: Bliss. Fast but little.
• Friendly Enemy: Rival captains Eva Destruction and Iron Maven are relatively friendly to their opponents, and it seems a lot of the roller derby teams hang out together after the games. Even when they get into a food fight, they're laughing their asses off the entire time.
• The Glasses Come Off: Both zig-zagged and justified. At the beginning of the movie, Bliss wears contact lenses to beauty pageants and debutante balls (at her mother's behest), then switches to glasses when in street clothes. Later, when Bliss joins the roller derby team, she switches to contacts full time.
• Greasy Spoon: The Oink Joint. Home of the Squealer.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Johnny Rocket and Razor having an pitifully bad dance-off at the hot tub party.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Over the first half of the end credits.
• Informed Ability: Pash is apparently smart enough to get into some fairly prestigious colleges, but we never see anything to indicate this.
  • She does mention earlier in the film that she has straight A's, which keeps her parents happy enough to not be watching too hard for their Austin excursions.
• It Got Worse: Pash gets arrested for underage drinking. Bliss' parents find out the truth about her roller derby double life and take away her skates. Pash stops speaking to Bliss. Maven blackmails Bliss into quitting roller derby due to Bliss being underage. And to top all that off, Bliss discovers that Oliver has cheated on her and has given away her Stryper t-shirt to a groupie.
• Ivy League for Everyone
• Large Ham: "Hot Tub" Johnny Rocket, the announcer at the roller derby track.
• Male Gaze: Quite a bit of it at that.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: "Let's go apeshit."
• My Beloved Smother: Take a guess.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Bliss all the way, although what's most remarkable about her is her speed, not her strength--she gets knocked down plenty.
• Primal Scene: Bliss makes Pash imagine one of these in order to induce vomiting.

Bliss: Pash, have you ever thought...about your parents making love? Your dad's naked body...
Pash: WHAT?
Bliss: His balls jiggling...sweaty...
Pash: [vomits]

• Punny Name: Seems to be a staple for the roller derby girls. You have Babe Ruthless, Rosa Sparks, Smashley Simpson, Iron Maven, and Eva Destruction.
  • A case of Truth in Television. Punny names are a staple of organized roller derby.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Hurl Scouts. Implied to be the case with the other derby teams, as well.
  • Also Truth in Television: A roller derby team can have on it a stay-at-home mom, a banking vice-president, a physicist and many, many other kinds of women who are bound together by their common interest in the sport.
• Really Seventeen Years Old: Bliss, at age 17, claims to be 22 years old.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Played straight with Razor, but subverted with the rest of the Hurl Scouts (that is, until Razor gives another team one of his plays--then the Hurl Scouts start getting their act together).
  • Subverted again at the end, when the Hurl Scouts--Razor included--celebrate the fact that, holy crap, they actually jumped all the way from last place to the finals.
• Shallow Love Interest: Oliver acts like this. Deconstructed a bit, however, as he only acts this way in order to get into Bliss' pants. And she falls for it.
• Shotgun Wedding:

Bliss' dad: I like smart girls, that's why I married your momma. Well, that, and I knocked her up.

• Shout-Out: After Bliss and Oliver's Night Out, Bliss is walking back up to her house, wearing Oliver's Green Jacket, a Black Skirt, and Black Boots (with Long-ish Brown Hair). See? ^{[dead link]}
• Status Quo Is God: Although they eventually make to the finals, they still lose despite giving it their best, but, "there's always next year!"...
• Team Mom: Maggie Mayhem.
• That Poor Cat: A cat yowls as Pash and Bliss leave the roller derby.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer shows that Bliss' parents eventually discover her roller derby career, and two seconds later it spoils their eventual reconciliation.
• Two-Person Pool Party: Bliss and Oliver.
  • Eva Destruction and Rosa Sparks also get cuddly in a hot tub in one scene.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Averted; actually, the Hurl Scouts lose all the time.
• Worthy Opponent: By the end of the movie, Iron Maven sees Bliss this way.

1. ↑ Despite Brenham being a small town and being on Highway 290, which leads to Austin, it's not quite a direct match because Brenham does have a substantial community college, and it's closer to Houston to Austin anyway.