Movie Review: Whip It.
I'm working through a whole set of emotions right now. I can't really tell which is the most important to highlight in this review, so I'll just start at the beginning and let it go from there.
Whip It, like Jennifer's Body a few weeks before it, is not the best movie in the world. Unlike Jennifer's Body, however, it really breaks my heart to say that.
This movie had a lot of amazing things: really strong & awesome girl friendships, a really strong & awesome mother/daughter relationship, a really strong & touching father/daughter relationship, lots of positively amazing & funny dialogue, so many great actresses, a wonderful message, and a ton of heart.
But it's like breakfast cereals. I'm sure, when you were a kid, there was a day when you mixed all your favourite cereals together. You had your Cocoa Puffs, and your Smacks, and your Kix, and your Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries, and your Frosted Flakes, and your Fruity Pebbles. You put all those in a bowl, and you were like, 'Holy shitballs'- well, whatever you said as a kid- 'This is going to be AWESOME!'.
And then you poured milk on it, and for the first minute or so, it was pretty awesome. Then the milk started to get funny, and the Crunchberries didn't taste very good with the Cocoa Puffs, and the Kix weren't as good as they usually were, and you realized that Frosted Flakes AND Fruity Pebbles are a lot like wet paper.
The lesson you learned that fateful Saturday morning was that sometimes, too much of a good thing can be bad. Really bad.
The problem was that this was Drew Barrymore's first film, but, because she's Drew Barrymore, no one checked her. First films are always kind of rough efforts, which is perfectly acceptable, because they're the first thing a director does, and they're just getting their legs. They don't know when to say no, or when to say yes, but they get enough shit right that it becomes a passable, if not good, movie.
The reason they get things right... well, the reason ANYONE who makes a film gets things right is because someone says to them, 'Hey, don't do that, do this'. What happened to Whip It is what happens to both every first-time director and every 20th time director, at the same time. Barrymore didn't know enough to do what she needed to do, but she knew enough that she didn't have to ask.
So this film ended up like a puddle of oil on parking lot concrete. It had some pretty colours, but they all ran together and made a kind of muck.
In non-poetic talk, this film had too fucking much going on. Ellen Page's character not only had to deal with her parents, but also her best friend, and an enemy at school. And then she was in a roller derby team, AND she had boyfriend. Then, she had to deal with her enemy in the roller derby league, and her enemy at school, and her pageant duties. AND THEN she had to deal with her boyfriend, her best friend, her parents, and the roller derby team. And then it had to all get wrapped up in a nice little bow.
All the plots and subplots sucked the life out of each other, and by the end, I cared, but I didn't care enough. I mean, I cried for pretty much the entire second half of the movie, but I didn't cry like when I watched Strike!, or Mean Girls, or Buffy, or Malcolm In The Middle.
Do I hate this movie? No. I liked it. I went in with really high expectations, so it was probably never going to make me completely happy, and because I know that, I can just like it for what it was. I don't think it'll be a comfort movie for me, or a movie I'll get tattooed on me at some point in time (ironic? no, not really, lol), but it's a movie I will want my daughters and granddaughters to see.
So why am I so fucking hard on this movie then if I didn't hate it? It's the worst thing in the world, but it's because it was written by a woman, and directed by a woman.
A few weeks ago, when Jennifer's Body was coming out, Diablo Cody had this quote (which I can't seem to find now) about how women can be really harsh to women filmmakers when they make a movie because they think it reflects on all women filmmakers, and how we should all be supporting each other instead of tearing each other down.
When I first read the quote, and up until tonight, I had this big change of heart. I watched Jennifer's Body, and I liked it, and I thought, 'Well... yeah. Yeah! HELL YEAH! That's what the Patriarchy WANTS! They want us infighting and whatever so they can tear us down! FUCK THE HATERZ!' and all that kind of stuff.
Then I remembered why I had felt that way in the first place.
See, being a woman sucks. Yeah, our junk is on the inside and we're all soft and shit. But no matter what we do, we ALWAYS have to do more than men. There is nothing we can do that is enough. Venus and Serena Williams can't JUST BE tennis champions. They have to also be sexy and feminine. Hilary Clinton can't JUST BE the Secretary Of State. She has to always carry with her the fact that she was not nominated for the presidency this year. Megan Fox can't JUST BE really fucking hot, she also has to be into video games and comic books.
A woman filmmaker can never JUST BE a filmmaker. Hollywood is a boy's club. Where a man can make a mediocre first film (looking at you, m. night... like, REALLY LOOKING AT YOU) and then have 3 'in dev' credits on IMDB, a woman makes a film, and no matter how good it was (looking at you, kathryn bigelow), she is all of a sudden doing one episode stints on single camera tv shows for 5 years before anyone even looks at her next project.
This happens because first films suck. That's just the way it is. Think of all your favourite directors; now think of their first film. It might be good, but it's not their best. 35mm doesn't care about gender. It has no fucking clue who's behind the camera. All films are exactly the same, with the potential to be great, and with the potential to suck.
It's the perfect level playing field.
But when Hollywood looks at a first film, and that first film is mediocre and it was directed by by a woman, it's so easy for them to just say, 'Women can't make good films'.
Which is why it's not acceptable to just pat a woman on the back for making a movie. She needs to be better than every other director that's made a film in the last 20, if not 50, years because it just helps Hollywood build its 'No Girls Allowed' treehouse.
Because, like everything else for all woman, you can't JUST BE. You have to be whatever you are, times 10. And even that only gets you to a place where people notice you. You need to multiple yourself hundreds of times to be considered 'good'.
Diablo Cody can say that whole thing about girl love & feminism and whatever the hell else she wants to say because Diablo Cody tows the hookers & blow party line. She's an easy brand, and she's hot right now, so she's as marketable as a toothbrush that also gives you head. She's safe for Hollywood, because she's sassy and she was a stripper and she's white and straight and articulate. She'll do the Playboy movie and the Sweet Valley High movie, and, until people stop eating it up, everyone will eat it up.
Also, she's a writer. Women have been writing screenplays for forever. It's the one high-profile place in Hollywood we've been allowed to be.
If Diablo Cody were a director, we wouldn't have any fucking clue who she is.
This is why it breaks my heart to say Whip It wasn't very good, but why I am still saying it. Cutsie-poo girl power shit isn't going to cut it. We're going to come out of this little women filmmakers swell with nothing to show for it. Whip It had the potential to be really fucking good, even in just a Penny Marshall kind of way, and it wasn't. It's going to get a lot of love on a lot of sides because it's a real feel gooder for ladygirls, and it's got lesbian undertones, and you know what happens once the queers find a niche.
But it's not going to win anyone any Academy Awards. It probably won't even win any Golden Globes. It's the Spiceworld for the current generation.
The worst part, the absolute worst fucking part, is that it bombed. Despite the issues I have with it, it could have come in pretty high in the box office arena if people- women- had just gone to see it. Why didn't they? Spiceworld made $10mil in it's first weekend. It broke a record. And then it was topped the next year by She's All That.
And Whip It, for all the marketing and the good word of mouth, made $4.8mil.
Do you know what movie did better than Whip It? Ice Princess. Have you seen this fucking shit? It is un-fucking-watchable. It is one of THE WORST movies ever made, hands down, and I've seen both Wicker Mans. If you want to see the many healthy, heaping piles of shit that did better than Whip It in their first weekend, here's a list. 2 of the films starred Hillary Duff, and one was JUST MY LUCK STARRING LINDSAY LOHAN.
But that's not me blaming my movie-going sisters across the country. I still blame Hollywood for that because Hollywood always markets films poorly, even after they've been released. How can FLICKA, a movie starring two complete unknowns and TIM MCGRAW make $7.7mil in it's first weekend, and Whip It, which had the midas touch all fucking over it, only make $4.8mil?
Hollywood understands 'Girls Rides Horse' movies. They don't even have to think about it. They just go, 'National Velvet, boom, there we go! Now who wants me to shut their dick in the door? Jenkins? C'mon, it's been at least 3 minutes!'.
They even know how to market shit like Juno, because quirky, kitschy films with handwritten titles are all the rage right now, so they just look at whatever they did yesterday and do that again.
But a sport movie. For girls?!
RECORD SCRATCH!
It's this that makes me want to hug Whip It so tightly, and just let it know that even though its SAT scores aren't good enough to get into an ivy league college, there's still plenty of awesome schools out there that will take it.
But, like every mother across the world, I know that coddling it and telling it 'We're number 2!' (actually number 7) is good enough is only going to hurt it in the long run. It needs to be better than the best if it wants to make it in this world, and it's not, so I'm disappointed.
C'est les vie des femmes.
Whip It, like Jennifer's Body a few weeks before it, is not the best movie in the world. Unlike Jennifer's Body, however, it really breaks my heart to say that.
This movie had a lot of amazing things: really strong & awesome girl friendships, a really strong & awesome mother/daughter relationship, a really strong & touching father/daughter relationship, lots of positively amazing & funny dialogue, so many great actresses, a wonderful message, and a ton of heart.
But it's like breakfast cereals. I'm sure, when you were a kid, there was a day when you mixed all your favourite cereals together. You had your Cocoa Puffs, and your Smacks, and your Kix, and your Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries, and your Frosted Flakes, and your Fruity Pebbles. You put all those in a bowl, and you were like, 'Holy shitballs'- well, whatever you said as a kid- 'This is going to be AWESOME!'.
And then you poured milk on it, and for the first minute or so, it was pretty awesome. Then the milk started to get funny, and the Crunchberries didn't taste very good with the Cocoa Puffs, and the Kix weren't as good as they usually were, and you realized that Frosted Flakes AND Fruity Pebbles are a lot like wet paper.
The lesson you learned that fateful Saturday morning was that sometimes, too much of a good thing can be bad. Really bad.
The problem was that this was Drew Barrymore's first film, but, because she's Drew Barrymore, no one checked her. First films are always kind of rough efforts, which is perfectly acceptable, because they're the first thing a director does, and they're just getting their legs. They don't know when to say no, or when to say yes, but they get enough shit right that it becomes a passable, if not good, movie.
The reason they get things right... well, the reason ANYONE who makes a film gets things right is because someone says to them, 'Hey, don't do that, do this'. What happened to Whip It is what happens to both every first-time director and every 20th time director, at the same time. Barrymore didn't know enough to do what she needed to do, but she knew enough that she didn't have to ask.
So this film ended up like a puddle of oil on parking lot concrete. It had some pretty colours, but they all ran together and made a kind of muck.
In non-poetic talk, this film had too fucking much going on. Ellen Page's character not only had to deal with her parents, but also her best friend, and an enemy at school. And then she was in a roller derby team, AND she had boyfriend. Then, she had to deal with her enemy in the roller derby league, and her enemy at school, and her pageant duties. AND THEN she had to deal with her boyfriend, her best friend, her parents, and the roller derby team. And then it had to all get wrapped up in a nice little bow.
All the plots and subplots sucked the life out of each other, and by the end, I cared, but I didn't care enough. I mean, I cried for pretty much the entire second half of the movie, but I didn't cry like when I watched Strike!, or Mean Girls, or Buffy, or Malcolm In The Middle.
Do I hate this movie? No. I liked it. I went in with really high expectations, so it was probably never going to make me completely happy, and because I know that, I can just like it for what it was. I don't think it'll be a comfort movie for me, or a movie I'll get tattooed on me at some point in time (ironic? no, not really, lol), but it's a movie I will want my daughters and granddaughters to see.
So why am I so fucking hard on this movie then if I didn't hate it? It's the worst thing in the world, but it's because it was written by a woman, and directed by a woman.
A few weeks ago, when Jennifer's Body was coming out, Diablo Cody had this quote (which I can't seem to find now) about how women can be really harsh to women filmmakers when they make a movie because they think it reflects on all women filmmakers, and how we should all be supporting each other instead of tearing each other down.
When I first read the quote, and up until tonight, I had this big change of heart. I watched Jennifer's Body, and I liked it, and I thought, 'Well... yeah. Yeah! HELL YEAH! That's what the Patriarchy WANTS! They want us infighting and whatever so they can tear us down! FUCK THE HATERZ!' and all that kind of stuff.
Then I remembered why I had felt that way in the first place.
See, being a woman sucks. Yeah, our junk is on the inside and we're all soft and shit. But no matter what we do, we ALWAYS have to do more than men. There is nothing we can do that is enough. Venus and Serena Williams can't JUST BE tennis champions. They have to also be sexy and feminine. Hilary Clinton can't JUST BE the Secretary Of State. She has to always carry with her the fact that she was not nominated for the presidency this year. Megan Fox can't JUST BE really fucking hot, she also has to be into video games and comic books.
A woman filmmaker can never JUST BE a filmmaker. Hollywood is a boy's club. Where a man can make a mediocre first film (looking at you, m. night... like, REALLY LOOKING AT YOU) and then have 3 'in dev' credits on IMDB, a woman makes a film, and no matter how good it was (looking at you, kathryn bigelow), she is all of a sudden doing one episode stints on single camera tv shows for 5 years before anyone even looks at her next project.
This happens because first films suck. That's just the way it is. Think of all your favourite directors; now think of their first film. It might be good, but it's not their best. 35mm doesn't care about gender. It has no fucking clue who's behind the camera. All films are exactly the same, with the potential to be great, and with the potential to suck.
It's the perfect level playing field.
But when Hollywood looks at a first film, and that first film is mediocre and it was directed by by a woman, it's so easy for them to just say, 'Women can't make good films'.
Which is why it's not acceptable to just pat a woman on the back for making a movie. She needs to be better than every other director that's made a film in the last 20, if not 50, years because it just helps Hollywood build its 'No Girls Allowed' treehouse.
Because, like everything else for all woman, you can't JUST BE. You have to be whatever you are, times 10. And even that only gets you to a place where people notice you. You need to multiple yourself hundreds of times to be considered 'good'.
Diablo Cody can say that whole thing about girl love & feminism and whatever the hell else she wants to say because Diablo Cody tows the hookers & blow party line. She's an easy brand, and she's hot right now, so she's as marketable as a toothbrush that also gives you head. She's safe for Hollywood, because she's sassy and she was a stripper and she's white and straight and articulate. She'll do the Playboy movie and the Sweet Valley High movie, and, until people stop eating it up, everyone will eat it up.
Also, she's a writer. Women have been writing screenplays for forever. It's the one high-profile place in Hollywood we've been allowed to be.
If Diablo Cody were a director, we wouldn't have any fucking clue who she is.
This is why it breaks my heart to say Whip It wasn't very good, but why I am still saying it. Cutsie-poo girl power shit isn't going to cut it. We're going to come out of this little women filmmakers swell with nothing to show for it. Whip It had the potential to be really fucking good, even in just a Penny Marshall kind of way, and it wasn't. It's going to get a lot of love on a lot of sides because it's a real feel gooder for ladygirls, and it's got lesbian undertones, and you know what happens once the queers find a niche.
But it's not going to win anyone any Academy Awards. It probably won't even win any Golden Globes. It's the Spiceworld for the current generation.
The worst part, the absolute worst fucking part, is that it bombed. Despite the issues I have with it, it could have come in pretty high in the box office arena if people- women- had just gone to see it. Why didn't they? Spiceworld made $10mil in it's first weekend. It broke a record. And then it was topped the next year by She's All That.
And Whip It, for all the marketing and the good word of mouth, made $4.8mil.
Do you know what movie did better than Whip It? Ice Princess. Have you seen this fucking shit? It is un-fucking-watchable. It is one of THE WORST movies ever made, hands down, and I've seen both Wicker Mans. If you want to see the many healthy, heaping piles of shit that did better than Whip It in their first weekend, here's a list. 2 of the films starred Hillary Duff, and one was JUST MY LUCK STARRING LINDSAY LOHAN.
But that's not me blaming my movie-going sisters across the country. I still blame Hollywood for that because Hollywood always markets films poorly, even after they've been released. How can FLICKA, a movie starring two complete unknowns and TIM MCGRAW make $7.7mil in it's first weekend, and Whip It, which had the midas touch all fucking over it, only make $4.8mil?
Hollywood understands 'Girls Rides Horse' movies. They don't even have to think about it. They just go, 'National Velvet, boom, there we go! Now who wants me to shut their dick in the door? Jenkins? C'mon, it's been at least 3 minutes!'.
They even know how to market shit like Juno, because quirky, kitschy films with handwritten titles are all the rage right now, so they just look at whatever they did yesterday and do that again.
But a sport movie. For girls?!
RECORD SCRATCH!
It's this that makes me want to hug Whip It so tightly, and just let it know that even though its SAT scores aren't good enough to get into an ivy league college, there's still plenty of awesome schools out there that will take it.
But, like every mother across the world, I know that coddling it and telling it 'We're number 2!' (actually number 7) is good enough is only going to hurt it in the long run. It needs to be better than the best if it wants to make it in this world, and it's not, so I'm disappointed.
C'est les vie des femmes.