The Runaways - a Missed Opportunity

"The Runaways" turns out to be a missed opportunity despite some strong performances and some kick ass rock and roll scenes. This biopic chronicles the quick rise and even quicker fall of The Runaways, an all-girl rock band from the 1970's which featured Joan Jett and Cherie Curie. Despite the best of intentions, it stumbles over the typical clichés of the biopic to where nothing new is brought to the material or the genre as a whole. Some characters are explored in depth while others are frustratingly left underdeveloped which weakens the dramatic structure of the screenplay overall. It's a shame because this movie had a lot of potential, but not enough was done to make it stand out from the pack.

The primary focus of "The Runaways" is on Joan and Cherie, and their introductions serve to define them as outcasts who are perfect for rock and roll. Joan is yearning to play electric guitar, but others including her guitar teacher tell her that those kinds of instruments are not for girls let alone women. This serves to fuel her ambition all the more, and there's a great scene where she defies her guitar instructor by plugging her guitar into one of his amps even as he asks her not to.

With Cherie, her first onstage performance comes when she lip-syncs to a David Bowie song in a talent show taking place at her school. When the audience starts booing her and throwing paper balls in her direction, she responds by defiantly flipping them all off as if their reaction is utterly meaningless. Joan meets up with Cherie when she starts putting together an all-female rock band with the help of drummer Sandy West, and they spot her in a club as a potential lead singer after having been told that the band needs a Bridget Bardot kid of look to it.

Once the group is put together, they remain under the Svengali control of rock producer Kim Fowley, a guy who constantly looks like he is about to break into a drag queen outfit. His methods of getting the band ready for the big time are unorthodox to say the least. Kim gets in their faces, forcing them to see that they are playing in a man's world where they will be ground out into sawdust if they don't show how badass an all girl band can be. At one point, he even brings in some teenage boys to throw stuff at them while they play including soda cans and dog poo to prepare for the treatment they will get as an opening act. All of this abusive training gets them up and ready for their first road trip that eventually leads them to landing their first record deal.

From there, "The Runaways" goes through the usual rock biopic motions of the band rising up, playing cool concerts in front of screaming fans, doing drugs, and eventually self-destructing over an exhausting pace of working and resentment over who ends up getting the most attention. Perhaps knowing where it is going steels us up for the inevitable pain we predict we will feel for each of the characters when their success turns out to be fleeting. I feel like I have been down this cinematic road one too many times now, so nothing really surprised about what went on here. In fact, it feels like a short film more than anything else. The history of the Runaways feels very truncated to what it must have been like in real life.

I also wanted to see more of the other band members in addition to Joan and Cherie. Granted, Joan is the biggest star of the bunch and Cherie is not far behind, but what about Sandy West and Lita Ford? Don't their characters have more to add to this story? Maybe this had something to do with the fact that some of the original band members did not want to give the rights to their life stories over to the producers, but they end up being treated like background players, and it only subtracts from the overall experience of the movie.

The acting for the most part though is very good, and it does make "The Runaways" worthy of a decent rental for some. "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart stars as Joan Jett, and she gets all the singing and guitar moves down in excellent fashion. I heard from somewhere that when the real Joan Jett got a tape of Kristen singing her songs and listened to them, she ended up thinking that a mistake had been made because Joan thought it was her singing. While she isn't necessarily great in the film, she does acquit herself well and shares a strong chemistry with Dakota Fanning.

As for Dakota Fanning, watching her as Cherie Currie (whose memoir this movie is based on) is really frightening compared to what she has done previously. It still feels like yesterday when I saw her in Steven Spielberg's "The War of the Worlds" as Tom Cruise's daughter, carrying her pink suitcase everywhere and constantly crying out for mom. But now she appears to have grown up faster than we ever thought possible, and she gives a performance unlike any we have seen her given before. Watching her go through a wave of self destruction, she is astonishing as she deals with the intimate details of Cherie's life and it all fueled the person she eventually became. Clearly, Dakota Fanning is in the acting game for the long run.

But the best performance in "The Runaways" belongs to Michael Shannon as record producer Kim Fowley. Ever since his Oscar nominated turn in "Revolutionary Road," Michael has become one of the most brilliant characters working in film today. We never once catch him trying to soften up Kim Fowley or make him easily likeable. Throughout, Kim comes across as the drill sergeant of rock and roll while yelling in these girls faces, refusing to let them rest or settle with being just "good enough." Shannon makes Fowley a hard guy to like, but impossible to find boring.

"The Runaways" was written and directed by Floria Sigismondi who is best known as a director of music videos for artists like David Bowie, Bjork, The White Stripes, and Fiona Apple among others. Floria's video of Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" in particular has become especially influential to other directors with its use of jittery camerawork and dilating. Throughout the movie, Floria really does capture the look of the crowd at clubs, and the concert sequences are very well staged. The best one of the bunch is for the song "Cherry Bomb" where the band fully realizes its place in rock, and they let it all hang out (figuratively speaking of course).

Still, the movie feels like it is missing a lot of things that could have made it better and help make it stand out among all the other ones that came before it. I've seen so many rock biopics over the years, many featuring a meteoric rise followed soon after by a crippling downfall, and the direction it heads in is utterly predictable. It's a shame because a movie looking at the formation of an all-girl rock band could have been so great and, had it been done right, would have shook things up quite a bit. But many characters are seriously underdeveloped, other histories are not given as much depth, and the Runaways as a band do not appear to have much of a history to generate a feature length motion picture. The acting is good, but so much more could have been brought to the table.

Now if they ever decide to make a movie about Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, I will definitely be in line for that!

** out of ****

See also:

The Top 5 Songs by Joan Jett