Bliss continues to sneak out, juggling her waitress job, pageant duties, lying to her family, as well her budding romance. Rival skater "Iron Maven" (Juliette Lewis) later finds out a fact about Bliss that jeopardizes her place on the team as well as the success of the team. Also, her family finds out about her extracurricular activity, which also forces Bliss to choose between the loves of her life--her family or her sport.
Daniel Stern is Bliss' dad; Drew Barrymore plays another teammate (she also directed and co-produced); Jimmy Fallon gives additional humor as the play-by-play announcer; Andrew Wilson is Bliss' team coach; Alia Shawkat plays Bliss' loyal friend.
The film is very faithful to the book, probably helped by the book's author Shauna Cross having also written the screenplay. The screenplay I think fleshes out stories and characters, namely that of the coach who gets a bigger presence here. Also, lots of the roller derby action is realized which makes the picture more exciting.
Page is a good actress for the role, she's both snarky-ish/teenaged as well as passionate in realizing her true goal. Barrymore did an excellent job at her first directing venture, picking a very female-oriented though not overly amibitious picture, while staying more to the sidelines in her acting part, thus not biting off more than she could chew. Harden's was a well-rounded character that wasn't stuck in her own pageant past and gave the mom's portrayal something more than what we see as pageant moms in reality television shows. Stern at first appeared to be a henpecked husband, but he too had his reasons and he did truly love his family (as did mom).
The skaters of course were larger than life but Wiig, best known as a comic actress, especially was given a more dramatic and real persona, a sort of mentor to Bliss. Acting all around was pretty perfect.
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