When movie stars sit in the director’s chair, anything can happen. American sweetheart Drew Barrymore has the sense to align herself with the best team possible, and in doing so, makes Whip It an empowering, intelligent coming-of-age story. But unlike, say, Freddy Got Fingered, there’s no authorial touch to go with Whip It’s glee.

Ellen Page stars as Bliss Cavendar, an angsty teen caught between her mother’s aspirations for her to be a beauty-pageant queen and her drive to break free from life in their Podunk Texas town. Bliss aligns herself with some unlikely allies: a rag-tag group of roller-derby maniacs called The Hurl Scouts — among them mother hen Kristen Wiig and Barrymore as “Smashley Simpson.” In Bad News Bears fashion, the girls come up in the rankings once Bliss’ untapped talents emerge, and the team is poised to best rivals The Holy Rollers (led by Juliette Lewis as an incredibly camp bee-otch). Of course, the movie is less about roller derby than it is about finding your tribe.

Filmed with a luminous, ’70s-style sheen by Wes Anderson cinematographer Robert Yeoman and further constructed by Magnolia editor Dylan Tichenor,  Whip It’s got all the hallmarks of credibility. Barrymore even wrenches a seasoned performance from Marcia Gay Harden that makes cogent her sad-sack matriarch’s motivations. (Amazingly, she also makes Daniel Stern seem like a credible father figure.) Unfortunately, while Barrymore’s star power has allowed her to craft a female-friendly film that neither demeans nor offends, there’s no personality in the work other than the sirens on the screen.