I can remember when Drew Barrymore was going through her rough time as a teenager and young adult trying to get past her drug abusive past, and in recent years I have thought she was doing fine, and I liked some of her movies. Not loved, liked, but I had nothing against her.

She directed and had a role in Whip It, which is about a teenager whose passion is to be on a roller derby team. The best part of the movie was the old cars (I never figured out if the movie was set in the 1980s or the actors it depicted couldn't afford newer cars). But they weren't old enough to be truly interesting and save this movie.

The teenager, played by Ellen Page, is torn between her desire to skate in the roller derby and please her mother, who wants her to participate in teen beauty pageants because that is what the mother did as a teen, and it was the highlight of her life. Here was an opportunity to show us all the glitz and artifice of these pageants with the big hair, fake tans, expensive clothes, and pressure from the moms, and contrast it with the weird makeup and sleaziness of the roller derby world, but it was as if the movie ran out of money, so they gave the pageant story line the lowest profile possible. The alleged $800 custom gown was totally understated, like something made in Home Ec class, and so were all the other gowns. Even if this was set 20 some years ago, a beauty pageant in Texas would have involved big hair, lots of makeup, and a lot more hoopla. The roller derby women wore more makeup than the beauty pageant contestants.

Drew Barrymore and Juliette Lewis play two of the roller derby women. I think Juliette Lewis had some great roles as a younger actress, Cape Fear remake for example, but this was a total disappointment. Drew Barrymore came across as drunk or stoned out of her mind on something, which I guess she pulled from her past experience.

The movie drags along, a series of pranks that are less than tasteless or marginally interesting: they are just plain boring. There is swimming pool sex, underage drinking, women having a food fight, cheating boyfriend, pathetic parents, cute younger sister, and almost winning a championship in the big game, but there are no new twists or insights, it's all time wasted. I watched it to the end, thinking maybe there was going to be a spark of something, but there never was, and they even ruined that old standard "Lollypop" during the final credits.

I remember watching real roller derby on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, and this movie does nothing to capture the rhythm and cadence of that sport. It does it a disservice, and nothing was done to illustrate what was so attractive to this teenager aside from 'hanging around with a bunch of shemales' as one character put it. Not even that idea was developed - all the women were presented as heterosexual, so it was just a passing reference, and I wondered if the novel the movie was based upon had more to say about it. Hopefully the various skaters on the team were better developed in the book than they were in this movie.

I was surprised to look at the reviews on Netflix this morning and find that critics and reviewers like this movie. Maybe I'm the first to admit the Emperor Has No Clothes. Go ahead, watch it and judge for yourself, but you've been warned. Jeez, I hope it doesn't get nominated for anything.