Whip It (film)

Whip It. Written by Shauna Cross; directed by Drew Barrymore; starring Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis. 20th Century Fox, 2009. 111 minutes. Image credit: Slashfilm.com.

Plot Summary
Bliss Cavender lives in the podunk town of Bodine, Texas, and thought she's busy waiting tables at a diner and competing in the beauty pageants her mother loves, she dreams of getting out. When she sees her first roller derby match, she falls in love with the sport and tries out for a team--and she makes it. As she excels at roller derby, she must find a way to negotiate between her parents' wishes for her and her passion for roller derby.

Critical Evaluation
Ellen Page's soft-spoken, sweet Bliss Cavender makes a believable transformation into the tough, no-nonsense Babe Ruthless (her stage name). Whip It avoids a trap that many teen movies fall into--making the heroine's journey all about getting the guy. Instead, Bliss seeks acceptance by her parents of something she loves, something she's really talented at that gives her power over her life. By not giving up on her dream, bliss becomes a role model for girls to emulate as they follow their passions. Roger Ebert reviewed it positively: ""Whip It" is an unreasonably entertaining movie....Yes, the movie has cliches. Yes, it all leads up to a big game. Yes, there is a character's validating appearance near the end. Yes, and so what? The movie is miles more intelligent than most of the cream-of-wheat marketed to teenage girls. Funnier, more exciting, even liberating."

Viewer’s Annotation
Bliss Cavender fell in love with roller derby the first time she saw it, and now she's on a roller derby team. But when her parents find out about her new passion, will she still be able to play?

Author Information
Shauna Cross, the screenwriter for Whip It, has said that she's inspired by "all the "girl writers" working these days: "It's completely badass," she says. "I root for the girls. I'm a total girl's girl."" (Variety). Shauna plays roller derby, just like Bliss Cavender, and wrote a YA novel--Derby Girl, on which Whip It is based--to dramatize the experiences she had while competing. While the story isn't strictly autobiographical, Shauna does have experience with both beauty pageants and roller derby, and she has said that "the juxtaposition of the beauty pageant world and the roller derby world was really fascinating to me because they both represent two extreme ideas of femininity. One is about perfectly coifed physical perfection, but when you look closer, it’s actually kind of brutal, I think. While the other is anarchy and bruises, and yet, it’s the most female-empowering thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s like plastic sexy versus real sexy" (Film School Rejects). Whip It is her first major screenplay.

Drew Barrymore is a major Hollywood actress, known for movies like Ever After, The Wedding Singer, and the Charlie's Angels franchise. Despite a difficult childhood marked by drug and alcohol abuse, she successfully made the transition from child star to adult actress. She has said that she was drawn to the script for Whip It because she related to Bliss's journey, especially compared to her own life growing up in Hollywood: "the pageant-world was a metaphor for Hollywood, for me. I...hate cookie-cutter boxes. I hate when you’re supposed to be a certain way, or a certain kind of person. But, I didn’t want to necessarily sh*t on the world of pageants because it’s a total way of life for some people. It does open some doors. I see every film parodying pageants, like they’re the worst things on the planet, and I didn’t want to do that. I just don’t think it’s right for Ellen’s character in the movie. There are so many great things about Hollywood. I love filmmaking. I love the creative process, but there’s a lot of crap in there, too. I don’t think I’m the perfection-type. I think I’m more of a derby girl! These metaphors really meant something to me" (moviesonline.ca).

Genre
Film

Curriculum Ties
Sports: roller derby

Booktalking Ideas
N/A

Reading Level/Interest Age
PG-13 rating. Of interest to any viewer capable of handling PG-13 content.

Challenge Issues
Disrespect for parents. A complete listing of sexual content, violence, and language can be found at the website Kids In Mind--encourage parents to check this website out before viewing a movie if they are sensitive to content issues.

I included this film because I love the actress Ellen Page, and I was interested to see what she would do after her breakthrough role in Juno.

Napoleon Dynamite (film)

Napoleon Dynamite. Fox Searchlight, 2004. Directed by Jared Hess and written by Jared and Jerusha Hess.  Rated PG, 94 minutes.

Plot Summary
Napoleon is the king of the anti-heroes in this unconventional high school comedy. He spends his days drawing unicorns and other mythical beasts, fighting with his brother Kip, and avoiding his uncle Rico, a self-defined "football star." When two new friends, Deb and Pedro, enter his life, the three of them start campaigning for Pedro to become the class president. But how can Pedro win, running against the popular Summer?

Critical Evaluation
From the first shot of the opening credits--a plate of tater tots--it's clear this cult classic is an original. It definitely won't appeal to everyone, but this film hits on the reality of high schoolers' treatment of each other in a way that's so real it's sometimes excruciating to watch. Napoleon isn't a likable hero. Orson Scott Card describes the film as a near-documentary--the drab isolation of eastern Idaho from the perspective of people who live there, with everyone in town just getting by. He remarks that "if the person at the pinnacle of the social pyramid needs to work to have spending money, we know we're not in the usual high school comedy" (his review here). But this unconventionality is part of the film's appeal. Recommended.

Reader’s Annotation
Napoleon is a shy loner in Preston, Idaho. When he becomes friends with Deb and Pedro, their campaign to make Pedro the class president gives Napoleon new confidence.

Author Information

Jared and Jerusha Hess are a husband-and-wife team best known for writing and directing the offbeat movies Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. Jared attended Preston High School in Idaho, where much of Napoleon Dynamite was filmed. Jared and Jerusha met while studying film at Brigham Young University. They have a son and daughter and live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jared says that "The characters of Napoleon Dynamite are inspired largely from people I grew up with in Idaho and especially from my five younger brothers and friends at school. I basically set out to tell the story of the kind of young people who have never really had their stories told - people like that nerdy kid who sat next to you in math drawing mythical animals, the people you never talked to or really got to know" (source). 

Genre
Film; high school. Cult classic.

Curriculum Ties
Sociology: bullying, loners

Booktalking Ideas
N/A

Reading Level/Interest Age
Grade 7 and up.

Challenge Issues
None.

I included this film because it appears on YALSA's 2010 Fabulous Films for Young Adults list.

Mean Girls (film)

Mean Girls. Paramount Pictures, 2004. Directed by Mark Waters; screenplay by Tina Fey. Rated PG-13, 96 minutes. Based on "Queen Bees and Wannabes", by Rosalind Wiseman.

Plot Summary
Cady Heron grew up homeschooled in the African bush by her zoologist parents. She thinks she knows everything about survival of the fittest, but all her skills are tested when she enrolls in a public high school for the first time. As she tries to negotiate her place among the school's cliques--the cool Asians, art geeks, mathletes, and more--the Plastics, the coolest girls in school, decide to befriend her. But when Cady falls for the Queen Bee's ex-boyfriend, Regina schemes to destroy Cady's social future.

Critical Evaluation
Tina Fey's satire of the female high-school experience hits all the right notes. It's over-the-top portrayal fo the cattiness of teen girls hits home, but also manages to be very funny. The second half of the movie, after the school riot and its aftermath, falls flatter than the first, but it's telling that a story about mean girls only becomes cloying and sentimental in the last 20 minutes as the film tries for a happy resolution. In reality, no endings are so perfect, but the backbiting throughout the rest of the film rings true.

Reader’s Annotation
Cady grew up homeschooled in Africa, but high school cliques seem wilder and meaner than anything she ever saw in Africa. Can she negotiate the world of high school girls without getting caught in the crossfire?

Author Information

Tina Fey was born in Pennsylvania in 1970. She considered herself a "supernerd" in high school (IMDB). After studying drama at the University of Virginia, she went to Chicago to audition for the Second City comedy group, where actors like Alan Arkin, John Belushi, Mike Myers, and Stephen Colbert got their start. She was the first female head writer in the history of Saturday Night Live, and was the co-anchor of SNL's Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon. She currently stars in the show 30 Rock on NBC.

Tina was asked whether the character of Regina, the Queen Bee, came from people she knew in her own life. She said, "Regina is not. Regina is the most amalgamated. One of Regina's big moves in the movie is actually based on my mom. My mom has this habit that if she sees a lady in a really ugly hat or a glittery sweatshirt, she'll go "I love your shirt" and I'll say "Mom, that's really mean". And she'll say "clearly she wanted someone to notice that shirt. She picked it out. It has a huge Teddy Bear on it". That is actually the closest to a real inspiration for the movie." In interviews, she shared other ways that teen girls were mean to her and her friends when they were teenagers, and it's clear that she had a huge emotional stake in the success of the film.

Genre
Film.

Curriculum Ties
Sociology: bullying, teen girls

Booktalking Ideas
N/A. To build interest, show the scene where Regina (the Queen Bee) first invites Cady to sit with her.

Reading Level/Interest Age
High school students and adults.

Challenge Issues
The language teens use to describe each other ("so gay he can barely function", slut, whore, etc.). While it felt realistic to me, considering my experiences in high school, it may seem inappropriate to older adults who are not accustomed to modern teen behavior.

Challenge Defense
Find linguistic studies of high school language to help show how realistic the language in the film is (for most areas). Become familiar with the film before recommending it.

I included this film because it was selected as a 2010 Fabulous Film for Young Adults. I also really like Tina Fey's work in 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live, and was interested to see her foray into screenwriting for film instead of TV or sketch comedy.

Juno (film)

Juno, directed by Jason Reitman, with screenplay by Diablo Cody. 20th Century Fox/Fox Searchlight, 2007.  96 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Plot Summary
Juno MacGuff is 16 and she decides she's ready to have sex, so she and her friend Paulie, a fellow outsider, "do it". Juno gets pregnant. As she faces some difficult choices about what to do, her acerbic wit and snarky, smart outlook on life bring her and her family through a tough situation. Her parents and best friend are loving and supportive, and Juno has found a wonderfully excited adoptive mother, but what Juno really wants is to be friends with Paulie again. Is it possible to have a baby and fall in love with the father afterwards?

Critical Evaluation
Diablo Cody's quirky script sparkles with wit and humor.  According to a review in Variety,  "The way the torrents of archly amusing, vocabulary-bending dialogue trip off the tongues of the characters, you know you’re in the hands of some manner of distinctive write,...very handy at shotgunning bright teen quips, as well as catching the attitudes of two distinct types of adults" (Todd McCarthy). In the New York Times, A.O.  Scott suggests that "it’s not that Juno treats her pregnancy as a joke, but rather that in the sardonic spirit of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, she can’t help finding humor in it...At first her sarcasm is bracing and also a bit jarring...but as “Juno” follows her from pregnancy test to delivery room (and hastily retreats from the prospect of abortion), it takes on surprising delicacy and emotional depth" (link). Roger Ebert says "the film's surprises, in any event, involve not merely the plot but insights into the characters, including feelings that coil along just beneath the surface so that they seem inevitable when they're revealed. The film has no wrong scenes and no extra scenes, and flows like running water." (Chicago Sun-Times). The screenplay for this film won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the film appears on YALSA's list of Fabulous Films for Young Adults in 2009. Ratings for this film were overwhelmingly positive, and teens will enjoy this humorous look at a real situation that some teenagers may be forced to face.

Reader’s Annotation
Juno MacGuff is 16 and pregnant. As she plans to give the baby up for adoption, she faces her challenges with humor and a sense of fun.

Author Information

Diablo Cody grew up in a Chicago suburb and graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in media studies. On a whim, she signed up for amateur night at a Minneapolis strip club and eventually quit her day job to become a full-time stripper (source). She later became a journalist and writer;she wrote a memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, when she was 24, and it was published in 2005 by Gotham Books. Juno was her first screenplay. She also is a staff writer for the TV series United States of Tara and wrote the screenplay for the recent horror film Jennifer's Body.

Genre
film; coming of age story

Curriculum Ties
Film: screenplay writing
Sociology: teen pregnancy

Booktalking Ideas
n/a

Reading Level/Interest Age
High school students will be interested in this film.

Challenge Issues
Sex (not explicitly shown in the film, but implicit in the story). Some language.


Challenge Defense
Concerned parents may want to check out a ratings site such as Kids in Mind or Screen It to get specific details about film content before deciding to allow their children to see this movie.

I included this film because YALSA selected it as a Fabulous Film for Young Adults. I loved it when it first came out, and I was glad for an excuse to see it again.