Whip It is a lady-empowering-alterna-sports movie that heaps on clichés, overuses tropes and follows a plotline more predictable than a chocolate chip Tracker bar. It will no doubt irritate anyone who considers themselves remotely edgy with its self-conscious, pseudo-hipster vibe and soundtrack of indie bands designed to appeal to thirteen year old outcasts who’ve just discovered black nail varnish. But godammit if I wouldn’t go see it all over again. I bloody loved this film. I loved every twist in its well worn plot, I loved its obnoxious, catchy tunes and I loved its uncomplicated message; when life gets you down, strap on some kick-ass roller skates, pull up your fishnets, race around a tiny track in front of a baying crowd of beered-up locals, and smash other girls into walls until the buzzer sounds.

Our story follows the winsome Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), a kooky teen who just can’t wait to break free of the strictures of her hokey hometown, Bodeen, Texas. She resignedly complies with her mother’s insistence that she compete in the cluster of local beauty pageants, and finds her only solace in best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) with whom she works at local diner, ‘The Oink Joint.’  Salvation comes through her discovery of a roller derby league in nearby Austin, the metropolitan state capital. There she meets tattoo covered girls with nicknames like Smashley Simpson, Eva Destruction and (my personal favourite) Bloody Holly. Bliss joins the team ‘Hurl Scouts’ earning her own nickname, Babe Ruthless, and rapidly becomes the rising star of the derby universe, making an enemy in previous roller queen Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis).

This beautifully goofy film is too long, has some wooden performances and teeters between kitsch and plain tacky. The boy I saw it with described it as the worst film he’d ever seen. But I think this is just his overdue experience of what it feels like for most women to watch your average bazooka-heavy action splatterfest, and that its femme-centred ethos was just too much for him. Just as boys are apt to forgive the worst excesses of the action movie because they get to watch cool motherfuckers say witty things and machete people, so I can gloss over the occasionally dragging second half of this film. Any lags in zippiness are more than made up for by the giant rollerskating food fights, underwater canoodling, or a scene where a screaming Drew Barrymore skates smack into a girl dressed as an air hostess pummelling her brutally into the ground while The Breeders’ ‘Bang On’ blasts in the background.