While this movie isn't going to (and didn't) win any awards, it's a great movie--funny, smart, inspiring. And badass. While rom coms are ubiquitous in this world, there just aren't enough girl-kicking-ass movies where the power of self and female friendships triumph. Until I downloaded that spiffy image up-top, I didn't realize the movie's tag line was "Be Your Own Hero," but--Yes! That is what this movie is about. And I thank Drew Barrymore for great direction of this you-go-girl move.
In a nutshell, Bliss (the ever-awesome Ellen Page), lives in the small town of Bodeen, Texas not too far from Austin, Texas. Bliss' mom (Marcia Gay Harden) is a conservative former beauty queen who wants nothing for her daughters but for them to bring home crowns. We get a sense of what Bliss thinks of these pageants in the first five minutes when Bliss arrives at the mic for her speech with blue hair.
But Bliss' mom isn't all bad. She takes Bliss shopping in Austin and momentarily agrees to buy her a pair of clunky army boots that perfectly fit Bliss' alternative style (the costume designer did a great job here--I wanted all of Bliss' don't-mess-with-me rock n' roll outfits). That is until she (the mom) points in the case at a bong, says "That's a lovely vase," and the salespeople burst out laughing at her. (Bliss buys the boots with her own money). Four tough-looking girls float in on roller skates with flyers for the Roller Derby championships, and later that week Bliss and her best friend Pash (Maybe from Arrested Development) sneak away the next week.
Pash and Bliss in particular are dazzled by the Derby match, and at the end one Derby girl, Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) tells Bliss she should come out for tryouts.
"You don't have the balls," Pash says, when Bliss suggests they go for it.
"I can grow the balls!" Bliss insists. This got me thinking of my own lack of balls and need to grow a pair. After watching girls hurtle themselves full force at each other, I would have said, "Na-uh, not for me." And the fact hat it was illegal for Bliss in the first place (she was 17, you had to be 21), would have sealed the deal my resolve to avoid the rink at all costs. But notBliss. She's her own damn hero, climbs on the "Bingo Bus" full of blue haired seniors, and sets off for the tryouts in Austin with her childhood pair of Barbie roller skate, and makes the fucking team!
There's so much to love about this film, from the team names--the Hurl Scouts (Bliss' team), the Fight Attendants, the Black Widows--to the individual player names--Smashlee Simpson, Eva Destruction, Bloody Holly, Pocket Rocket, Jaba the Slut, and my personal favorite, Bliss' Roller Derby pseudonym: Babe Ruthless, (just about every time the announcer (Jimmy Fallon) called out Baaaaabe Ruthless! I repeated the name out loud and chuckled,)--to the sheer fun of an all-out female food fight.
But there the more profound parts too. This movie does a wonderful job probing the complexity of the mother/daughter relationship. Two people who love each other but just can't understand each other. We understand why Bliss can't stand how her mom exalts the pageants, and yet when we see her mom look at the picture of her younger self as a beauty queen wistfully and say, "Unfortunately the beauty doesn't last," we feel for her. And the moment when Kristin Wiig drives Bliss to school and advises her to cool it on her mom, she says, "You're lucky to have a mom who cares." Bliss coming to understand what a gift it is to simply be loved, even if it is in a flawed kind of way.
The best part is Bliss fighting for herself--both on the rink and in life. It doesn't come without consequences--she gets hurt, both emotionally and physically--but in that moment, when her secret is revealed to her parents and they are raging mad, she cries out, "I am in love with this!" we know she has already won.
Would we all be so lucky to love something so very much? Something we'd fight for, get bruised and beat up for? At the end, I was ready to start googling Roller Derby teams in Calgary, but that's not really the point. The point is to find your arena--the place where you shine, where get knocked down, tumble, and then get back up and hurtle forward full speed ahead.
My favorite moment was at the end of the film. Bliss' dad, (another great character I haven't even mentioned here), proudly walks onto the lawn and looks over at his neighbor. Already, we've seen his neighbor erect signs with his son's names and football numbers into his lawn, as I guess they do in Texas. Well, Bliss' dad pounds in his own sign with a proud smile. It says: Babe Ruthless. That's the thing--when you become your own hero, you kind of become everybody else's too.
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