This alone makes Whip It look downright radical, given that films are way more used to presenting teen girls as anodyne fembots, Woman Gaga burlesques, or gothic obsessives scooped up by an unsuitable fellow who is much too old. Whip It is set in a various universe, and not only because it is a roller derby comedy.

Barrymore has even managed to encourage Juno’s Ellen Page to forsake her ironic eyerolling performances of latest films to play the less precocious but more convincing Ecstasy Cavendar, a tomboy dying to escape her tiny Texas hometown where her mum ( Marcia Gay Toughen ) grooms her for beauty festivals. On a visit to Austin, she has her first run-in with women that have more on their mind than Elnett when some unruly rollerskaters swing thru a store, leaving flyers in their wake.

From the instant she sees her first female roller derby, she’s hooked. The film has some fun with the roller girls’ nom de skates like Jaba the Slut, Rosa Sparks and Barrymore’s accident-prone Smashley Simpson. “I just wanted to tell you fellows, you are my new heroes, ” gushes Delight to Maggie Chaos ( Kristen Wiig ).

“Well, put some skates on and be your own hero, ” she is told quickly. Hiding the undeniable fact she is underage, Delight finds her old Barbie skates and at an open audition demonstrates enough speed and grace to land a place in the Hurl Scouts, the worst team in the league. Whip It is a low-key, unpretentious picture that it might not get the credit it merits for often skating close to clich before delivering a surprising elbow in the ribs. The ladies of Whip It are smart and accomplished but they do not need to look like Megan Fox or Amanda Seyfried to be worth caring about. Actually it is the freckled, unconventional-looking Alia Shawkat who gives the film’s best performance as Bliss’s best buddy, Pash. Iron Guru ( Juliette Lewis ) may be Bliss’s rival on the skate circuit, but she is ultra-competitive instead of being an one-dimensional stone-hearted villain.

When Delight falls for a boy ( Landon Pigg ), he neither asks her to give up the roller derby for him, nor has to save her. It is almost as if this movie thinks that ladies should have something to do aside from stress about boys for a few hours. Even Bliss’s competition mother is more nuanced than she strictly should be, with a real job as a postie in an evil uniform that offers another reason why she loves the frocks and frills of the beauty circuit. As a director, Barrymore equips us with enough info to understand who is winning and losing in the derbys, but she knows the real focus isn’t the matches but the locker room and the after-parties, where Bliss’s new life blossoms.

Barrymore also has smart instincts regarding her completely different performers : to play the Scouts’ tolerant coach, she even reveals a Wilson brother ( Andrew, bro of Luke and Owen ) who can act. Gutsy, nerdy and animated, this is a charmer that doesn’t belittle its characters, or its audience. For cinema-goers hunting for fun this Easter, it is the neatest thing on 8 wheels.