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The Runaways Review
06 Sep 2010
Critics rating: 3 stars out of 5
Reviewed by Tom Charity , LOVEFiLM
The Runaways

Yeah, Joan Jett!

I have to admit to a teenage crush on the leather-clad singer, the missing link between Suzi Quatro and Chrissie Hynde. But I didn’t know that before she led the Blackhearts Joan was a teenage Runaway, the first genuine all-girl rock band. This is the story of that band.

Cast details

When The Runaways cut their first LP in 1976, legendary producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) made sure their ages were printed on the sleeve. Sweet sixteen! As he exults it in Floria Sigismondi’s movie, “Jailbait [expletive deleted] jackpot!”

These days teen sensations come along every six months or so, straight off the Disney Channel conveyor belt. But The Runaways were raw and not at all the Disney type – and the larger than life Fowley wasn’t exactly cut from that corporate cloth either.

A glam Frankenstein (Frank-N-Furter made his bow in September ‘75), played with intensity and flamboyance by Shannon, Fowley puts the band together piece by piece in his broken down trailer, barking for more attitude, more sex, more “balls”.

“This isn’t about women’s lib,” he yells, “It’s about women’s libido.”

But liberation and libido aren’t mutually exclusive, even if this underground Svengali expects to call all the shots. It’s his confusion on that score that probably seals the band’s crash-and-burn fate.

Lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is recruited because Fowley and proto punkette Jett (Kirsten Stewart) like her look on a Friday night at the English Disco on Sunset Strip. Can she sing? Cherie’s experience consists of lip-synching to David Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel at a high school talent show. She was booed off the stage, but she doesn’t tell them that. The alternative is following in her older sister’s footsteps, working in the nearest taco take-out.

Evoking the no-frills, straight-ahead vibe of 70s drive-in flicks (the first image is menstrual blood hitting the sidewalk), Sigismondi doesn’t pretty up the music scene. She doesn’t have to. She’s directed pop videos for Bowie, Bjork and the White Stripes, so she knows what she’s talking about. There’s built-in excitement and energy as the band comes together to produce short, sharp shockers like ch ch ch ch “Cherry Bomb” (improvised by Kim and Joan on the spot in Cherie’s honour).

In a scene that deserves its own exhibit in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Infamy, Fowley has the band play on while they’re pelted with trash and dried dog excrement. It’s unorthodox, but also, Sigismondi implies, useful preparation for the road.

The Eclipse stars are the right age (19 and 16 respectively), but more importantly they seem of the right time. They suck on cigarettes, party all night, and there’s not a paparazzo in sight.

Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart

Proving once and for all that she’s more than just a wan face, Kristen Stewart gets Jett’s peculiar toughness  - we can see she’s a survivor. When the band begins to splinter and Joan starts smashing furniture around the studio, it’s not about ego or bravado, it’s just the frustration of someone who loves what she does and sees it slipping away from her.

Cherie is a more vulnerable character, but somehow a less compelling figure. Although the movie is based on Currie’s memoir – it’s lightly structured as an adolescent’s coming of age story - scenes picking over her fractured family relationships have a rote feel. It doesn’t help that Riley Keough – Elvis Presley’s granddaughter – playing big sister Marie is a miserable actress – though it’s nice to see Tatum O’Neal back, however briefly, as the girls’ absentee mum.

The last half hour is quite a sorry come-down from the energy of the first sixty minutes.

The inevitable burn-out, such a staple of the rock biopic, drags down the movie just when it’s hitting stride. The last half hour is quite a sorry come-down from the energy of the first sixty minutes. 

It may be true that most rock dreams end with a dose of harsh cold reality, but Joan Jett’s ongoing love affair with rock n roll is proof that it doesn’t have to be that way. Stewart steals the show here, but they’ve made the movie about the wrong woman. Jett remains the runaway that got away.

The Runaways Reviews

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