The Runaways is Dull and Off-Target

 

THE RUNAWAYS (2010)

Directed by Floria Sigismondi

Apparition, 106 minutes, R (sexual situations involving teens)

★★

 

 

 

Is it possible to make Joan Jett seem boring? Watch the 2010 film The Runaways and you’ve got your answer. It’s an oblique glance at the band that not-yet-17Jett envisioned in 1975 that’s now considered a pioneering all-female rock ensemble. The movie, though, focuses more on 15-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie–to the degree that it stays focused on anything.

 

1975 was a weird cultural moment; 1960s rock gave way to soft rock and the sonic emptiness of disco. Into the void stepped punk, a DIY alternative to corporate rock. It allegedly embraced an ethos of violence, rebellion, and rejection of disco’s glittery-but- vacuous materialism. In truth, many punk bands were every bit as fabricated as made-for-TV Monkees (1966), a list includes The Sex Pistols and, to a great degree, The Runaways. Joan Marie Larkin transformed herself into Joan Jett, but the band was largely assembled by record producer Kim Fowley to get the right “look.” The right sound was of secondary concern.

 

Sparkling fidelity was seldom the point of punk, but Fowley never quite decided what his creation was supposed to be: punk, hard rock, glam, or something else. (Their glam persona looked a bit like the Bee Gees undergoing hormone treatment.) The film leaves the impression that Fowley (Michael Shannon) wanted the Runaways to be a masturbatory jailbait fantasy for young men. Jett (Kristen Stewart) recedes into the background as we watch Currie (Dakota Fanning) mutate into a 15-year-old Lolita crossed with a Victoria’s Secret street walker. The other Runaways–Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Robin Robins–are little more than extras that occasionally moan about how Currie’s come-hither soft porn, drug usage, and raging ego is ruining the band. In less than four years The Runaways went from international sensation–the Japanese went nuts over them–to Jett solo projects.

 

This bit of music history has been dissected like high school biology frogs, but this isn’t the movie’s biggest problem. Currie’s story held potential for a potent drama–an alcoholic father, a broken home, manipulation by Fowley, drug addiction, a breakdown, reconciliation with her twin sister–but director Floria Sigismondi presents everything without taking into account that The Runaways was Jett’s band and she its enduring legacy.

 

Casting was a major problem. Stewart and Fanning were roughly the right age for their respective parts back then–20 and 16–but this doesn’t mean either was cut out for them. Some may take issue with this, but I simply don’t get the Kristen Stewart phenomenon then or now; at her best she’s merely adequate and in The Runaways she’s as flat as a Heartland highway. Fanning was/is much more talented, but Currie wasn’t a good role. I suspect she was cast because Sigismondi wanted audiences to infer a physical as well as emotional loss of innocence, but at 16 Fanning exuded a sweetness that makeup, foul language, and lingerie could not hide. She was, as she appeared, a skinny kid whose attempts at playing a sex kitten invokes the feeling she hadn’t yet been weaned.

 

Michael Shannon was given leeway to portray Fowley as a greedy and abusive sexist pig. What we see on the screen is classic overkill with Shannon hurling invectives, threats, screams, and garbage. Fowley’s questionable character aside, Shannon’s overwrought performance comes off as caricature, not a slice of musical history.

 

The Runaways has a few redeeming qualities. It’s another reminder of why Joni Mitchell chose the phrase “star maker machinery” in her 1974 song “Free Man in Paris.” (Mitchell is proof not all mid-70s music sucked!) Celebrity can be a deadly game if you try to live the hype. Despite Sigismondi’s clunky direction, it’s hard not to sympathize with how a kid like Currie could get ground up by the machine (and that it still happens). It was also interesting to see a mature Taum O’Neal cameo as Currie’s mother, given that some felt she too was stained by early fame.

 

Mostly, though, The Runaways was more dud than a “Cherry Bomb.”

 

Rob Weir