The Runaways, 2010.
Directed by Floria Sigismondi.
Starring Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart, Michael Shannon, Riley Keough, Stella Maeve and Scout Taylor-Compton.
SYNOPSIS:
A coming-of-age biopic about 70s teenage band The Runaways.
Fronted by the then-15 year old-‘jailbait’ blonde Cherie Curie, with backing vocals and electric guitar provided by Joan Jett (who went on to sell 10 million records worldwide with her own band, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts), the first all-rockin’ 70’s girl band The Runways disappeared into obscurity after just two studio albums.
While everyone remembered Jett’s black scraggy mullet, her leather dress code and the power ballad tune, I Love Rock n’ Roll (which was years later covered by Britney Spears), Curie and band members Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox left the world without a trace – until now.
Chronicling their quick rise to fame and the dramatically short downfall, The Runaways (loosely based on Curie’s autobiography Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway) looks at the band before they were formed and the uphill struggle to the top in such a male dominated industry where the odd friendship between Curie (Dakota Fanning) and Jett (Kristen Stewart) sparked up.
Mirroring the David Bowie Aladdin Sane vinyl cover, suppressed teenager Cherie Curie paints on Bowie’s signature zigzag look, while her twin sister comments on how stupid she looks. “I don’t care,” sprouts Cherie, who is then seen miming Bowie’s Lady Grinning Soul at her school’s talent contest where she is the target of boos and paper balls, reacting by flipping the crowd off.
Joan Jett is also portrayed as a pent-up teen, taking guitar lessons where she isn’t able to show off her full potential and told that ‘girls can’t play electric guitar’ while longing to be on the big stage, performing in front of stadiums of fans.
By chance, Joan meets record producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), who later becomes the bands manager. She tells Fowley of her plans to start an all-girl rock band, and the two go on a hunt for members, stumbling across Cherie, sitting coolly in the back of a club. And so The Runaways begins.
Floria Sigismondi’s music video credentials have paid off. Combining the hypnotising lights and screeching vocals perfectly, Sigismondi pulls off the trickiest part of a biopic out the bag– she makes us feel like we’re there, watching The Runaways’ tear it up on stage and hear Currie belting out the provocative hit Cherry Bomb in her tightly fitted corset.
Kristen Stewart evokes enough rock edge and sensitivity to play Jett. This is her best role to date, shoving aside the mediocre performances with the diabolical script she had to work with on the Twilight Saga to prove to the rest of the world that she has the acting chops first shown in 2004’s Speak (much like The Runaways at the time had to prove they could rock as hard as the men).
Dakota Fanning, as always, pulls off a performance worthy of a standing ovation and it’s nice to see her transcending into adult roles with ease so she will have less likelihood of disappearing off the map as her counterpart, Cherie.
There are notable flaws with the film. The Runaways is like a PG rated version of the real events. According to Curie’s graphically detailed biography, Fowley made the girls watch him have sex to ‘show them how it was done’ while Cherie’s descent into drug addiction is merely hinted at (we do see her and Joan snorting drugs and popping a couple of pills early on, but nothing more is said.)
The biggest disappoint is the barely speaking roles the other members have, but of course that was obviously going to be the case. The Runaways is a Curie-Jett show; it’s about their relationship – the other members are just bystanders – but by the end of the film, it doesn’t matter – The Runaways is a rock ‘n’ roll biopic at its best and dare I say it, ‘badass’.
Cherokee Summer
Movie Review Archive
Originally published September 13, 2010. Updated April 10, 2018.
