The Runaways (2010)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

A Disappointing Continuation

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Blistering performances.

I love rock biopics, but initially avoided this because it starred Kristen Stewart, star of films where no acting, or plot, or character depth are involved. So it was with some trepidation that I eventually watched it, hoping it wasn't all that bad. Sadly, it is. Kristen Stewart is indeed talentless. What could have been an edgy and intriguing look at one of rock's more controversial bands turns into a fairly lacklustre join-the-dots docu-drama. Much of this is the fault of the director, Floria Sigismondi. However, Kristen Stewart's lack of ability to play anything beyond one-dimensional characters doesn't help, especially as she plays the main character, Joan Jett.Stewart is aided and abetted by Michael Shannon, who, as Kim Fowley, tries too hard to be dark, quirky and edgy and comes off as over- acting.Dakota Fanning makes up for this, to a degree, by putting in an excellent performance as Cherie Currie. There are some other pluses: the music is great, of course. The history of The Runaways is covered fairly well.

What does one say about a movie that's really good but could have been a great?First off. Why was it really good? Well because The Runaways were the first all female rock band that wrote their material and played their instruments. The fact they were charismatic eye candy was a bonus for us males - so God bless'em for that. That makes this an important movie.This type of genre tends to fall flat on its face, especially for musicians, when an actor is cast that can't play their respective instrument or mime the vocals. So when Joan Jett (played by the very gifted Kristen Stewart)is playing the guitar and singing, it appears authentic. Didn't hurt that Kristen resembles Joan Jett either.Dakota Fanning is another gifted actress. Only difference is she exudes a wholesomeness that should have banned her from playing the role of Cherie Currie. But she handled it like a true pro. Folks. we're talking," Sex, Drugs, Booze and Rock N Roll." Plus, she sings amazingly well on these tracks.Casting Elvis Presley's granddaughter as Cherie's twin sister Marie was a great choice. The role was small but gave her the opportunity to mix- it-up with the pros and shine.Now.How could it have been made great? Well,simple; more emphasis on the other band members, especially Joan Jett. The story line leaned too heavily on Cherie's family life leaving me wanting to know more about the other group members family life. I still don't know diddly-squat about Lita Ford's life. We actually get to see Sandy West's Mom's horrified reaction after Kim Fowley comes to their home. And as for Joan's family life? Well forget about it. Not a peep.And I don't recall the bass player, Robin, played by Alia Shawkat from the sitcom Arrested Development having any dialogue! We see they played in Japan. But did they play at CBGB's ? It desperately needed that kind of balance.It would also have been nice to show a photo of the real-life Runaways in 1976 that morphs into how they look today, just before the ending credits. Cliché? absolutely. Relevant? Very much so. BTW, the peeing on a guitar scene did happen according to Joan and the group it happened to was ( drum roll,please ) RUSH !As a final note, the commentary is not to be missed. It has Joan Jett, Kristen and Dakota dishing out morsels of interesting background info. It too is rated R because of Kristen's penchant for whimsical profanity

Well, I completed my homework assignment of watching The Runaways. Can I go out and play now?The objective of the task a friend gave me was to see a different side of Kristen Stewart since I thought I hadn't see a movie with her in it yet – outside the Twilight series, that is. Turns out, yeah, I did see Jumper and Into the Wild, but I do not recall her in those. Here…you'd be blind not to notice her even while she's fairly mellow. As always, it appears.Now, I'm not a Joan Jett fan, though I do enjoy her music when it comes on. I'm so ignorant on the topic of her past or present, I thought it was just her and some backup chicks. I didn't know anything about "The Runaways" band, nor the sequel: "Joan Jett and the Blackhearts." (I guess I was right on my thoughts for that one.)Well, despite my ignorance and the fact this movie really wasn't about Joan, I enjoyed the ride of the girls wanting to develop a band from virtually nothing into sexy stardom. And they didn't waste any time jumping right into the destructive drug usage.Perhaps this movie was accurate, because not only was Joan Jett one of the major producers, she apparently was on set all the time pointing out the accuracies. If this is true, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, it was a pretty dull ride with so little happening, the movie seemed to be stretched out as far as it could to make this a feature length. Again, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't the most "explosive" biography I've seen. (In fact, the original poster's tagline was: "It's 1975 and they're about to explode." Hardly.)But, it did have fairly decent acting all around with, surprisingly the best performance in a movie about an all-girl band was Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley. He was sure out there, but I thought he was above the rest. And the rest wasn't that bad: the two leads, Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie were very good…at looking melancholy all the time. Sure, that, again, might be accurate; these real life ladies might have been a bit of a couple of downers. I did believe in their performances, but they didn't grab me to care one way or another where they ended up.The soundtrack, of course, was killer and the decades old scenery believable. I would recommend this movie of the (sorta) rise, (sorta) fall and (sorta) reinvention of an all (sorta) kickass girls band – they really didn't see that badass, by the way.And, yeah, it was nice to see some range out of Stewart, even though in the two big rolls I've seen her in were sorrowful and downhearted rolls.

Though it's named after and supposedly about the groundbreaking all-girl rock band of the 1970s, a more accurate title and description of this film would be "The Rise and Fall of Cherie Currie, guest starring Joan Jett and with a special appearance by Kim Fowley". They just took the story Currie wrote in her book about her life, sandwiched in some stuff with Jett and let Michael Shannon tear the scenery apart with his bare teeth. If you wanted to look back through the decades and know who The Runaways were and why they were important, this movie will only give you a glimmer of a clue. Maybe they were so much of their moment that you can't really appreciate them if you weren't there at the time. The fact remains this motion picture doesn't tell you anything you can't see on any one of a hundred "Behind the Music" shows on VH-1.With that, however, The Runaways is still a satisfactory little flick. Kristen Stewart is great, as always, and Michael Shannon is out the door, down the street, into your home and having sex with your mother as The Runaways' almost Nietzchian record producer. Dakota Fanning is reel purty but isn't asked to do much besides glower or look forlorn. The musical sequences are quite good and there are a couple of moments when writer/director Floria Sigismondi does an excellent job visually projecting what it's like to be inside the cyclone of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. The movie also touches on the sexism the group had to endure and combat, but only in the most clichéd and hackneyed of ways. As rock bio-pics go, there sure have been a lot worse than this.What keeps it from being any better is that Cherie Currie's story dominates the movie and it simply isn't that interesting. She's a 15 year old with looks and attitude who got plucked from obscurity to be the band's lead singer, couldn't handle the hard life of being a rock star and crashed back to reality. Joan Jett's tale of ambition and determination takes a decided back seat and the other members of The Runaways can be entirely described as "the jealous one", "the lesbian one" and "the one who barely has any lines and might as well be a mic stand". The best parts are when Shannon's Kim Fowley is completely blunt and ruthless in the molding of these girls young enough to be his daughters into icons of rock, but that largely disappears for the 2nd half of the film. The most intriguing part is how Cherie's older sister Marie (Riley Keough) transforms herself into a mirror image of her little sis. That image suggests so much but none of it is ever explored.If every member of the band had been given a fair share of the narrative and it had focused more on the struggles between The Runaways and Fowley and between them and the rest of the world, I can't help but think that would have been a much more compelling story. Especially because the look of the movie is outstanding in how it captures the zeitgeist of the 1970s. I'm not sure any character's appearance has better symbolized that era of cultural decadence and stylistic chaos than Fowley's.If you're a fan of this group, this genre or this time period, you'll probably enjoy The Runaways. Nobody else needs to rush out and watch it, but there's no reason anyone shouldn't give it a look.