Runaways Not Quite the Cherry Bomb
Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) wants to be a rock star, the first to put together and front an all-girl Rock ‘n’ Roll band. She even goes so far to walk up to noted record producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) and tell him just that straight up and with absolutely no pretense. Instead of shooing her away he instead likes her spunk, and together they start putting the pieces together that could potentially make her a star.
Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart in Apparition's The Runaways
But something is missing. They’ve got Joan, a gifted songwriter who also plays a wicked electric guitar, and the rest of the band, including a just coming into her own Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) on Bass, is totally kick-ass, but one piece to their puzzle just isn’t coming into focus.
Enter 15-year-old blonde Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). With her slinky jailbait come-hither moves fronting thing there’s no way this band, now christened The Runaways, won’t be a success. It’s dynamite in a bottle wearing stiletto heels and skintight black leather, money and fame for the taking just as long as these girls are willing to strut their collective stuff for it.
Ah, but there’s the rub, right? You can’t have a Rock biopic if things don’t somehow fall to pieces, Floria Sigismondi’s (a noted music video director and photographer graduating to feature films) The Runaways certainly no exception to that overly familiar rule. Seriously, has there ever been a famous musician or superstar band that didn’t fall prey to drugs, sex, inflated egos and everything else associated with stardom? Is this what happens to every single gosh darn one of them?
Granted, if that didn’t happen every time out then there probably wouldn’t be a reason to make a film about their rise and fall, so I understand why it is so easy for filmmakers to be drawn to the troubled and raucous lives of Rock stars. But just because that’s so that doesn’t mean it is necessarily interesting to watch an entire film about them, the clichés so thick in this particular genre you can almost predict how many there are going to be and when they are going to happen even before walking into the theatre.
That’s the case here, sadly, and while there are plenty of elements in The Runaways to get excited about originality certainly isn’t one of them. Sigismondi goes out of her way to hide the more tiring aspects of her relatively straightforward and maudlin script by doing funny things with the camera, tilting it this way and that and running things in and out of focus so frequently by the end I was starting to get a slight headache. She has editor Richard Chew (Bobby, The New World) mix things up, the director doing her darn best to try and emulate the anarchic style of the freewheeling band she’s profiling.
Sorry to say she doesn’t quite succeed, the look and feel of the film sometimes standing in the way of the dramatic narrative moments they’re supposed to be supporting. I found myself getting more and more tired of it all as things progressed, and as impressive as many elements are, and as euphoric as the opening acts admittedly made me feel, by the time all was said and done I find myself dwelling on all the things that annoyed me and not the ones I was delighted by and thoroughly enjoyed.
And there is much to enjoy, not the least of which are the performances by Stewart and Shannon. These two kick some serious ass, and anyone who gets down on Stewart because of her work in those two Twilight enterprises I’m positive they’ll quickly reassess after watching the actress here. Both stars are at their very best, Shannon so good I can say this early in the year he’s worthy of a second Academy Award nomination and that I'm going to stick with that assessment through December and beyond. I couldn’t take my eyes off either one of them, and as much as the lukewarm screenplay and the far too flashy direction annoyed me those facts didn’t dilute my adoration for either actor one single bit.
I wasn’t as taken with Fanning. Not that the youngster is bad – she’s just fine, sometimes even fantastic – it’s just that it’s too noticeable that she’s trying to push her image into a new direction. I felt like I was watching her act, and unlike Stewart she just couldn’t disappear into her iconic persona the same way as her costar. It’s a look-at-me performance, and as much as I appreciated her willingness to go for broke there was something missing, some sort of spark, that just didn’t make her ultimate transformation entirely believable.
I’m not sure what daddy is going to think of all this. As for mom, I can’t say she’s going to find it all that satisfying, either. But while The Runaways isn’t the cherry bomb it could have been thanks to Stewart and Shannon, and with a welcome assist from bits here and there that turn the volume all the way up to 11, the movie isn’t anywhere near a total loss. It isn’t Rock ‘n’ Roll and I can’t say I loved it, but if this was the record playing on the jukebox I might be inclined to listen to it again all the same. Heck, there’s a good chance I might even dance.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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