The Runaways (2010)

It seems movies about punk rock seem to get the experience right, like, Sid and Nancy, and The Runaways. The bio-pics of the 60's era musician's either focus on the addictions or the music, but punk era bio-pics of the band seem to get both right. Not only does The Runaways manage to tell the story of the band, but also manages to translate the existential experience of the times and the music.

The Runaways follows the myth of the band, The Runaways. Created by Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) a long time Sunset Strip dissipate/denizen with record producer cards in his pocket he meets the teenaged Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) who wanted to start an all girl band. Fowley accommodates her by her introducing her to drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve) and they go prowling L.A. clubs to find a Bridget Bardot type to front the band and discover the 15 year old Cherie Curry (Dakota Fanning). Fowley soon has them in a an abandoned trailer to practice as he whips them into shape with his "Rock `n' Roll boot camp." The irony in The Runaways was that the band was the creation of the band (like the Sex Pistols owing their existence to Malcom McLaren) both of whom understood the style over substance philosophy of self-promotion and controversy. When The Runaways started discovering themselves as artists they had to fight Fowley who treated them as a product and that he owned them, and they owed their success to him.

As the band climbs to rock stardom, the movie captures at first the freedom and victory the first flash that success provides. But in the story of Runaways front woman Cherie Currie, who truly lived up to the band's name in trying to escape and avoid her father's alcohol problems, the sins of the father are visited upon the daughter and Currie finds herself wrapped up in drugs and alcohol. Much has been made about Fanning playing a role that is so "adult," but she is the same age Currie was as she lived it. The Who sung of "girls of 15 and sexually knowing" life can add years of experience to a teenagers life and Rock 'n' Roll can accelerate that; you can see it on Fannings face towards the end of the movie washed up at 17 Currie could have been well on her way to making Jim Morrison's death seem that of an old man.

Stewart and Fanning both disappear into their roles. Stewart seems to inhabit Joan Jett, she has the look down, she sounds like Jett, she even has the "hunch" over the microphone that Jett has when singing and playing. Michael Shannon is decadently creepy as Fowley. The other members of The Runaways are set in the background, Sandy West is there so The Runaways can form, and Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) when they need a little internal dissent in the band, but the movie is based on Cherie Currie's autobiogrpahy Neon Angel, and focuses on hers and Jett's story.

I read some of the previous reviews of the movie and I found the movie much better than the reviews, it's a story that rocks!

DVD Bonus Features: The Runaways DVD has a couple of nice bonus features. A commentary with Joan Jett, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. Some times the commentary sounds like three girls sitting in the row in front of you talking, but during key scenes of the movie Jett adds a few remembrances' or tidbits on how close to reality the scene is to make it worthwhile. There's also a nice little making of documentary "Plugged In" that talks with all the principals and key members of the crew.

I thought the performances by the two leads were terrific. However, Lita Ford got completely snubbed in this movie. If you didn't know the band and of her legacy you'd wouldn't even remember Lita Ford being in the group after watching this movie. Also, as someone that has seen them live, this movie really down played how raunchy and wild these girls performances really were (sexual behavior, blood, etc). The music was a lot cleaner too (like it was done in a studio) than how it really was, but I guess that's to be expected in a movie trying to be successful with a wider audience. Finally, they indicated sex was going on with the girls, but at the same time, they really steered around it avoiding any specifics (probably to protect the people involved as the girls were under age).

Oh, one other thing that bothered me quite a bit was at the end or the movie they say what happened to Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, and manager (went on to do so and so...). But, again they left out Lita Ford, Sandy and the bass player (who's name escapes me at the moment). That was really a huge mistake in my mind and I'm shocked they did that.

A note on the extras. I listened to the whole movie with the commentary by Joan Jett and the two stars. While interesting, the girls spoke over Joan Jett all the way through discussing their performances and just random stuff (mostly just talking to talk). I really wanted to hear from Joan what really happened through out, but she hardly was given a chance to tell us. Also, they should of asked the other band members to be there as well as their thoughts and memories would have been very interesting.

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In the middle of the glitter and glam rock of Ziggy Stardust, sappy contemporary love songs, and upon the threshold of the disco era, a revolutionary genre of music was skirting right behind, the punk era of the mid to late 1970s and a Southern California all girl rock band called the Runaways. Indeed, one of rock and roll history's unsung bands to have emerged in musical history. The film adaptation of the rise and fall of the band is an eye-opening experience, especially for those who may not have heard of the band or may have had a small inkling of exposure of the music of any one of the band members, most famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart), Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton), Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), Sandy West (Stella Maeve), and Jackie Fox; Fox is given the fictitious name of Robin (Alia Shawkat) due to her refusal to use her name in the film. Director Floria Sigismondi captures the decade with the images, the fashion, gender-bender appeal, and most importantly, the music of the Runaways that provide the soundtrack for the film.

The film does a good job showing a by-gone era that has long passed from platform shoes, bell-bottom jeans, and feathered-hairdos that typified the 70s. But the Runaways along with their male counterparts, the Ramones helped the listening public keep abreast with guitar driven rock amidst the dance fever that was riding the wave of the decade. However, fame and success does not come without unfortunate circumstances, ironies, and clichés that are explicitly displayed throughout this fairytale rags to riches story. It is these aspects that make the band's story interesting in two instances. First, young women barely 18 years old and making a name for themselves by playing, singing, and strutting their rock stage stuff within a male-dominated business that was highly charged with sexism during the height of the women liberation and feminist movement, which the women in the band were not trying to prove, but rather the opportunity to simply land a record contract, signed with Mercury Records, and to play rock and roll music in a man's world. This is stressed throughout the film by the girls' somewhat conniving manager/impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) who keeps the male-chauvinistic and raunchy sexual innuendo flying as he shows and trains the girls how to be rockstars and claims that the band will be as big as The Beatles; not quite but had a similar following with the mania and gaining fans as far as Japan. Second, the spotlight and melodramatic scenes of lead singer Cherie, her close relationship with her sister Marie, living within the shadow of her actress mother (played by Tatum O'Neal) and her downward spiral due to band member rivalry and drug addiction and guitarist and singer Joan who helped to keep the rock and roll spirit alive despite the tensions that surmounted that would eventually cause the band's demise but would reemerge as a solo artist to sing the most identifiable rock anthems, "I Love Rock and Roll."

The Runaways is an enticing film filled with nostalgia and the music. And possibly, the movie may finally allow the women to receive their due in rock and roll history 35 years later.

Read Best Reviews of The Runaways (2010) Here

Perhaps its simply ironic justice that a group so thoroughly abused by their managers, the press and each other would, in the ostensible retelling of their story, be so thoroughly abused by their filmmaker and two of their members. The most obvious clue to the on-going animosity between the band members is that bassist Jackie Fox is spitefully renamed in film as the fictional "Robin." This follows latter-day bassist Victory Tischler Blue being denied the use of original Runaways studio recordings for her documentary Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways. Add to that the near complete absence of dialog for guitarist Lita Ford and drummer Sandy West in this "biopic," and you have a film that posits the Runaways as a springboard for Joan Jett's solo stardom. Even vocalist Cherie Currie, upon whose biography this script is ostensibly based, has her story short-changed in the telling.

The screenplay, credited to first-time feature director Floria Sigismondi, is a mess. The motivations and timeline are muddled, and the band's story isn't given any context. Was the band famous or only infamous? What led up to Cherie quitting the band? What happened to Lita and Sandy after The Runaways (or, for that matter, during their time in the Runaways)? The action and plot points often feel made up, rather than based on actual people and events. Worse, the characters' unending moroseness suggests there wasn't a moment of joy in the Runaways' career, and it remains unclear why any of the girls stayed involved in the band. The pacing is tortoise-like and the film's modern style fails to capture the mood of the times. The dialog and direction often reduce the `70s rock milieu to trite shorthand and communicate little feel for the period. The fictional Foxes, in which Currie was featured alongside Jodie Foster in 1980, is a better window into the hard partying hopelessness of late-70s Los Angeles.

Were the script and direction the only weak link, the film's leads might still have been entertaining, but they're out of their depth. Kristen Stewart shows little conviction as the firebrand Joan Jett. Dakota Fanning is no better, showing little charisma, sex appeal or rebel spirit, and often looks scared of her role rather than scared within it as an acted emotion. The real-life Currie is compelling and authoritative in the DVD's making-of documentary, showing Fanning's characterization to be docile and lost in comparison. The film would have been better cast without movie stars, so as to allow the actual band members' characters to take center stage. Michael Shannon provides a bravura performance as Kim Fowley, but Sigismondi gives him only one note to play, and his character quickly dissolves into repetition. The script fails to provide any of the characters dramatic arcs no one is transformed, and when Currie declares that she wants her life back, the viewer is left to wonder why she wants to return to a life that was portrayed as being terrible to begin with.

The historical liberties and omissions are numerous, including the fictionalized introduction of Currie's infamous corset on the band's 1977 tour of Japan. Currie's been widely quoted as having purchased the item in Los Angeles and she can seen wearing it in a 1976 promotional video of "Cherry Bomb." More damaging to the film's credibility, the transformational sexual assault that Currie details in her autobiography is barely alluded to. Jackie Fox's departure is necessarily skipped, since the bassist was skipped altogether as a character in the film, and the film's end skips past the Runaways initial post-group activities, including Currie's solo album, her album (and hit single) with sister Marie, Joan Jett's trip to the UK, her work with Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones, the recording of her 1980 eponymous debut, and Lita Ford's emergence as a metal guitar goddess. Instead, the film rushes to Jett's canonization as a solo superstar.

The film's credit-roll bios of Currie, Jett and Fowley provides the final FU to the rest of the band, whose contributions and post-band lives were apparently insufficiently important to merit mention. One might excuse the mythologizing of the Runaways as the first all-girl rock band (discounting Goldie & The Gingerbreds, the Feminine Complex, Fanny, and numerous garage-rock bands cataloged on Girls With Guitars), but the notion that Joan Jett was the band's sole artiste serves only to propagate the petty jealousies that tore the group apart in the first place. Floria Sigismondi's deft work as a modern music video director fails to provide the eye needed to sympathetically capture the feel of the 1970s, and in doing so she fails to tell the Runaways story in a way that does the band justice. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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As the credits rolled for The Runaways I found it odd that it was suggested that the movie was based upon Runaways' lead singer Cherie Currie's book, Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, because it seemed to me that during the course of the movie the focus was mainly on Joan Jett. Now I've not read Currie's memoir, but my guess is that it focuses more on Currie and less on Jett. However, the movie indeed was co-produced by Jett, so I guess that I really shouldn't have been too surprised.

Guitarist Lita Ford and Drummer Sandy West get little screen time, and even fewer lines. And any of the (I think it was three) real bass guitarists I don't think were even mentioned. The story focuses on Jett and Currie's relationship and personal lives more than it does the music, but don't get me wrong, music certainly is a major part of the movie.

The most interesting part of the music was watching the start up of the band and watching Record Producer Kim Fowley's major involvement. The biggest letdown of the movie was the omission of major parts of The Runaways touring days and tales of the road.

I happened to see The Runaways with The Ramones circa 1977 (at the Palladium in Passaic NJ I think it was). What a crazy show and I'm sure that most of the shows were just as crazy. Man, during The Runaways entire set I'll never forget the crowd chats, and let me tell you that the crowd was mostly chanting for crude favors versus more music. It would have been very interesting to see how the band dealt with that aspect of their career...and especially while out on the road with The Ramones.

Overall I was entertained by The Runaways movie, but felt it was largely incomplete...from a touring detail perspective and from the perspective of telling all of the band members' stories. Worth a watch if you were a fan or interested in their genre, but perhaps worth the wait for cable versus renting. No collector's item here.

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