Recruited for what would become a pioneer all-female hard rock band in the 1970s, two teenagers have to contend with whether to promote their music or sex appeal as per the wishes of their eccentric music producer in this film based on the true experiences of the title band that propelled Joan Jett to fame. The film is based on the memoirs of the band's lead singer, Cherie Currie, and the film is mostly spent on the dynamics and rising tensions between Joan and Cherrie, with Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart both convincing in the respective roles. Fanning has some particularly good moments towards the end as all the fame gets to her head and a final conversation between the pair provides a perfect note for the film to end on. In order to focus on these two big personalities, the film uncomfortably ignores the other three members of the band though, all of whom are so lightly developed that they remain completely interchangeable throughout. The fact that Cherie's family background gets such a large focus over Joan's when they are equal protagonists does not quite sit well either. Never to mind, the film is well paced enough that there is rarely a dull moment with Michael Shannon stealing every scene he is in as the band's off-the-wall producer with the craziest twinkle in his eye as he gets them to practise playing while food is thrown at them (!) and as he keeps going on about all negative publicity being good. There is also a lot to like about the girls' determination to succeed in a traditionally all-male industry no matter what it takes.

I love rock biopics, but initially avoided this because it starred Kristen Stewart, star of films where no acting, or plot, or character depth are involved. So it was with some trepidation that I eventually watched it, hoping it wasn't all that bad. Sadly, it is. Kristen Stewart is indeed talentless. What could have been an edgy and intriguing look at one of rock's more controversial bands turns into a fairly lacklustre join-the-dots docu-drama. Much of this is the fault of the director, Floria Sigismondi. However, Kristen Stewart's lack of ability to play anything beyond one-dimensional characters doesn't help, especially as she plays the main character, Joan Jett.Stewart is aided and abetted by Michael Shannon, who, as Kim Fowley, tries too hard to be dark, quirky and edgy and comes off as over- acting.Dakota Fanning makes up for this, to a degree, by putting in an excellent performance as Cherie Currie. There are some other pluses: the music is great, of course. The history of The Runaways is covered fairly well.

Released in 2010, "The Runaways" chronicles the quick rise and fall of all-girl rock band The Runaways who released four albums from 1976-1978. I mean "girl" literally since they WERE girls at the time; for instance, when the band was formed in late 1975 singer Cherie Currie just turned 16 years-old. The movie is lightly based on Currie's book Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway and therefore focuses on the friendship of Cherie (Dakota Fanning) and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and their relationship with their eccentric manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon). Riley Keough plays Cherie's "better looking" sister while Scout Taylor-Compton and Stella Maeve play band members Lita Ford and Sandy West.The Runaways had some brief success in the late 70s, but they quickly nosedived because they were teenagers and simply couldn't handle the pressures and temptations of the 70's rock 'n' roll lifestyle, particularly Cherie. The movie successfully illustrates this. Of course "Cherry Bomb" was a fairly well known song but, beyond this, they just weren't that popular. They were a here-today-gone-tomorrow act; a minor blip in rock history. You could say they were a good "farm band" for the more popular Joan Jett and Lita Ford. Speaking of the latter, Scout Taylor-Compton looks uncannily like her, but the character is given short shrift in favor of Jett and Currie. While this is understandable given that the movie was based on Currie's book and the short 96-minute runtime, there's no excuse for ignoring Lita at the end when the movie cites what the characters went on to accomplish. Since Ford was the second most successful Runaway in the music business, second only to Jett, this is inexcusable.Despite this grave transgression, the movie works because of the great performances of the principle actors. Shannon is particularly effective as the freakish Fowley (who passed away in 2015 at the age of 75). Unfortunately, with a movie that's only an hour and a half long they can only tell so much of the story. Currie described the real story as epic and that the movie is just a "lighter kind of flash" of what The Runaways were for two and a half years. Being a 70's rock biopic of teenage girls you can expect the sex & drugs elements with profanity, crudeness and a dismal pall. Like 1991's "The Doors," the movie doesn't show much of the fun side of rock 'n' roll.If you can look beyond the vulgarity and ugliness, however, the movie has (some) heart. For instance, the genuine friendship of Jett and Currie, which can be observed in the phone call at the end; and the loving relationship of Cherie and her sister Marie. The sisters went on to record a couple albums together – 1978's BEAUTY'S ONLY SKIN DEEP and 1980's MESSIN' WITH THE BOYS – but their music career failed to go further due to Cherie's problems with drug dependency.I liked this movie better the second time I watched it. It's too crude and dreary for my tastes and it lags here and there, but it makes up for it with effective performances and the warm relationships noted above. Plus it has a rockin' soundtrack. If you watch recent interviews, you'll observe that Lita and Cherie grew up to be palpably honorable, beautiful women. Joan's cool too, of course; she's just not my cup of java, although I like some of her songs. The film was shot in the Los Angeles area.GRADE: B- (6.5/10)

Though it's named after and supposedly about the groundbreaking all-girl rock band of the 1970s, a more accurate title and description of this film would be "The Rise and Fall of Cherie Currie, guest starring Joan Jett and with a special appearance by Kim Fowley". They just took the story Currie wrote in her book about her life, sandwiched in some stuff with Jett and let Michael Shannon tear the scenery apart with his bare teeth. If you wanted to look back through the decades and know who The Runaways were and why they were important, this movie will only give you a glimmer of a clue. Maybe they were so much of their moment that you can't really appreciate them if you weren't there at the time. The fact remains this motion picture doesn't tell you anything you can't see on any one of a hundred "Behind the Music" shows on VH-1.With that, however, The Runaways is still a satisfactory little flick. Kristen Stewart is great, as always, and Michael Shannon is out the door, down the street, into your home and having sex with your mother as The Runaways' almost Nietzchian record producer. Dakota Fanning is reel purty but isn't asked to do much besides glower or look forlorn. The musical sequences are quite good and there are a couple of moments when writer/director Floria Sigismondi does an excellent job visually projecting what it's like to be inside the cyclone of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. The movie also touches on the sexism the group had to endure and combat, but only in the most clichéd and hackneyed of ways. As rock bio-pics go, there sure have been a lot worse than this.What keeps it from being any better is that Cherie Currie's story dominates the movie and it simply isn't that interesting. She's a 15 year old with looks and attitude who got plucked from obscurity to be the band's lead singer, couldn't handle the hard life of being a rock star and crashed back to reality. Joan Jett's tale of ambition and determination takes a decided back seat and the other members of The Runaways can be entirely described as "the jealous one", "the lesbian one" and "the one who barely has any lines and might as well be a mic stand". The best parts are when Shannon's Kim Fowley is completely blunt and ruthless in the molding of these girls young enough to be his daughters into icons of rock, but that largely disappears for the 2nd half of the film. The most intriguing part is how Cherie's older sister Marie (Riley Keough) transforms herself into a mirror image of her little sis. That image suggests so much but none of it is ever explored.If every member of the band had been given a fair share of the narrative and it had focused more on the struggles between The Runaways and Fowley and between them and the rest of the world, I can't help but think that would have been a much more compelling story. Especially because the look of the movie is outstanding in how it captures the zeitgeist of the 1970s. I'm not sure any character's appearance has better symbolized that era of cultural decadence and stylistic chaos than Fowley's.If you're a fan of this group, this genre or this time period, you'll probably enjoy The Runaways. Nobody else needs to rush out and watch it, but there's no reason anyone shouldn't give it a look.