Barrymore starred in her directorial debut film "Whip It". It follows a high-schooler (Elliot Page) ditching the teen beauty pageant scene and participating in an Austin roller derby league. Barrymore worked with screenwriter Shauna Cross for months on script revisions, with Barrymore pushing her to "avoid her story's tidier prospects, to make things 'more raw and open ended.'" While the film found limited box office receipts, it was favorably received; according to review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, critics agreed that her "directorial debut has enough charm, energy, and good-natured humor to transcend its many cliches". For her venture, Barrymore garnered nominations for a Bronze Horse at the Stockholm Film Festival and for the EDA Female Focus Award at the 2009 Alliance of Women Film Journalists. In "Everybody's Fine", Barrymore played the daughter of a recently widowed retiree (Robert De Niro). The drama flopped at the box office, but Stephen Holden for "The New York Times" considered Barrymore "as ingenuous as ever" in what he described as a "small role".