(Also reviewed by Kim Nicolini here.)
The Runaways started off so promisingly. Back to the mid 70’s LA rock scene. Crazy kids in need of loud music and meaning. An era where girls weren’t supposed to pick up electric guitars. The next phase in female empowerment, women’s liberation, competing with the boys on their own turf — really powerful historical developments that were true. The story is true, authentic, straight from Cherie Currie’s memoir.
Michael Shannon is brilliant as the exploitative Kim Fowley. What a performance, and you just want to see more of what he’ll come up with next. Kim was co-collaborator, mentor, and demonic abuser, user, a raving nut job.
So why did The Runaways fizzle out right in the middle?
The movie, much like the band, just burned out prematurely. This might have been an intentional decision to match the story narrative to the tragic path of the band. Big mistake.
As far as I can tell, they blew it by restricting the story to Cherie and her not-even-in-the-band sister, who received way too much screen time.
The real story was Joan Jett’s, if you’re going to highlight one.
Joan, with a kick-ass performance by Kristen Stewart, should have been the focus of the film, with events arranged from her point of view.
The story flirted with two protagonists, and was bound to side with Cherie, who’s book they were filming, and who had top billing with Dakota Fanning blonded-up and slutted out.
Unfortunately, Cherie walks out and gives up half way through the story, and halfway through their album’s recording, if the film is accurate on that point. Such a let down. If it had been structured differently, it still might have worked, but then Cherie would need to be the antagonist to Joan’s drive to make it work against all odds.
That’s going to sound a little formulaic, I’m sure.
They actually did try and steer the ship in that direction for an emotionless third act. Basically the band is dead. Joan has sat in a bathtub and thought up some lyrics. Joan has succeeded with Crimson and Clover, and the two associates talk on the phone live on the air for a few moments. Nothing meaningful transpires, and the movie ends with a bunch of text.
That’s a third act?
Nothing dramatic happens. Joan doesn’t struggle, apart from throwing a drunk stoner out of her roach infested apartment in a purely tacked-on symbolic bit of fluff. If the entire story was structured to make Joan the sympathetic one, driving against the drugged out idiocy of Cherie, the depravity of Kim, the dissolution of the band, and then rising again to form her own band, get them produced and make it work in the end, it would have been a strong narrative. As is, the success just seems to happen off screen. She’s just suddenly the Joan Jett we already know about. Her struggle to get there got fast-forwarded so that Cherie and her alcoholic father can annoy us some more.
And what of the rest of the band — you know, The Runaways??? Lita Ford, a brilliant guitarist, is presented as just a catty, jealous bitch in a scene or two. Vicky Blue, the bass player, was actually filming many of their exploits as they happened, and she later released it all as a Runaways documentary: Edgeplay – A Film About The Runaways, the definitive record of what happened.
Vicky was actually my favorite Runaway after catching the documentary. She’s vibrant, creative, and mostly ignored in this version.
Dakota turns in some great performances on stage, and the music is better-produced. The sound quality possibly exceeds that of the original band, who were quite rough around the edges.
But the filmmakers let it slip away by relying on Cherie’s tunnel vision and blinders to make it her story, when she wasn’t really the protagonist, wasn’t the force behind the band, nor its songwriter, nor its visionary.
Compare the Edgeplay documentary to the narrative, and see what I mean. It could have worked. Vicky Blue’s version is more emotional and more satisfying than the prettied-up version that was supposed to excel there.
Political Film Blog 