Pun Salad

Not a bad little movie, managing to combine the "teenage girl angst" genre with a standard "sports underdog" plot. For some reason we missed it when it first came out on DVD, but Netflix eventually worked it up to the top of my queue.

Miss Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) has a hectic life, holding down a waitressing job in small-town Texas diner, and also competing in beauty pageants, at the demand of her driven mother. So little wonder she tries to find some other way to spend her time, like getting up to the big city (Austin) and secretly joining a semi-pro Roller Derby team.

Once you have that premise down, I bet you could write most of the script yourself. Are Bliss's teammates a quirky and amusing bunch? You bet. Are her initial efforts clumsy and embarrassing? Why, yes they are. Do her efforts to keep her parents in the dark backfire spectacularly? Sure thing. Is there a crisis where she seems to have lost everything? You bet. Does she eventually triumph?

Well, no spoilers here, but please. How many of these movies have you seen?

That's not to say it isn't fun. Ellen Page is not quite as funny as she was in Junebug, but pretty close. Drew Barrymore directed it, and has a small part.