Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Dakota Fanning
Kristen Stewart
Directed By:
Floria Sigismondi
I like Joan Jett. She's a strong model for young girls around the world and she achieved that status without being annoying in any way. It's quite the feat. She also happens to be a quite gifted rocker. Which is even more something. Being all guts and skills for a woman isn't easy, especially since generations of men in suits dressed them up and made them sing suggestive songs on the stage for the enrichment of musical corporations. When you're talking Joan Jett, you're talking of a woman who rose up from obscurity in the Black Flag way. With the power of her own damn will.
The Runaways peeks into the legend of Joan Jett through the creation of her first bands...The Runaways. The storyline is shared in between Joan (Stewart) and the lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), their complex relationship and how The Runaways were somewhat doomed from their creation. See, the band started when Joan had the balls to go see rock manager Kim Fowley and told him about her plans to start and all-girl rock band. Turned on by the huge possibility this was in the untamed market of the eighties, he will squeeze them out like lemons and cash in on the originality of their sound. As tough as they are, the teenage girls band is on a death clock with the legendary impresario on their back.
I'm not too sure what to think about The Runaways. It has its share of valuable insight about the creation of the group, the writing of their hit song Cherry Bomb being my favorite. Most hit songs have been written hastily, on the corner of a napkin, and Cherry Bomb isn't different. I'm also glad director Floria Sigismondi decided to stay true to the facts, rather than try to force some empty message about woman condition here. Joan Jett had what it took to succeed in the music industry and Cherrie Currie didn't. In fact she didn't want that life and now she's a chainsaw sculpture artist, her true vocation. In that sense, The Runaways is a worthy, stylish biopic about the creation of one of the most important female groups in rock n' roll history.
But for the love of god, Baphomet and everything good and evil, why or WHY DID THEY CAST KRISTEN STEWART AS JOAN JETT???? Why did they have to cast a brain-dead teen idol to play the most fuck-you, in-your-face woman? She turned Joan Jett into this angsty, sexually confused (OK, that part might be true), Kurt Cobain wannabe. Joan Jett is this, not that. I can think of a dozen actresses able to pull this off. Who cares is they're a bit older? It's not like Catnip Stewart was twelve years old. Word is that Jett was pleased with the performance herself, but I guess she was just being polite. After all, it's flattering to have somebody play your part on screen. As her far, I'm not happy. Stewart looked like garbage on screen. Well, she always does, on screen or in life, but that's another story. She's one girl I don't mind leave to Robert Pattinson.
The Runaways is a good biopic, if not a little straightforward and trendy. You can feel the respect and admiration of Floria Sigismondi through the movie and it's a good thing that they got the cinematographic treatment they deserved. It's not a game changing movie, it's way too quiet and contemplative to be of any relevance, but it's a good source of information about some of the most cuttroath girls in the music industry. It's just that it could have been so much more, if it wasn't from Miss. Derpa Derp playing the biggest feminine rock icon.
SCORE: 72%
