The story of a teenage girl who joins an Austin Roller Derby team to escape from the oppressive genteelities of her mother’s southern beauty pageant culture, Whip It borrows from about every underdog-sports/coming-of-age formula there is, which would make the movie seem like little more than a checklist of cliches, if there wasn’t something more to it than that. The movie has a self-aware quality that is more than a little charming and plays like The Mighty Ducks meets Ghost World (a shame that the film’s ensemble cast had no room for the great Emilio Estevez and Steve Buscemi).

Also appearing in the movie is Daniel Stern as a lovable goof father that should be familiar to anyone who’s lived in the suburbs. You’ll also see a few familiar SNL cast members, the singer Eve, and the always uncontainable Juliette Lewis who plays the token arch-rival/bully in a performance that is comically, self-deprecatingly bitchy. All in all, Drew Barrymore’s film will be a delight for young female audiences, and even a few of us emotionally-dead older people may recall a time when movies were fun for the sake of fun.