Written by Linda
March 25, 2010
When you hear the roaring strums of Joan Jett's electric guitar, you want to take your devil horns out of your pockets and thrust them in the air. In that sense, The Runaways totally succeeds.
The Runaways were formed in Los Angeles when punky Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) approached producer svengali Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) at a nightclub and sold herself as a female rocker, who wanted to be part of an all-girl rock band. First she and drummer Sandy West impressed him enough that he handpicked the rest of the girls, including "jailbait" 15-year-old Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) plucked from a crowded nightclub based entirely on her Briget Bardot sex-kitten look. Suddenly they were a band!
This film follows the rise of the band to uber-success in Japan (and lesser success at home) and the subsequent (and very rock n' roll) spiral into drug abuse for Currie. You could write a fictional tale of a fake band based entirely on this formula. Funny thing is most of these musician biopics follow this trend because that is what really happened!
If it isn't alarming enough that the girls in The Runaways were teens when they hit it big and began the ubiquitous downward spiral, it's alarming to see young actresses, like Dakota Fanning (aged 15 at the time of filming) snorting lines of coke on film. The true over-the-top story is crazy enough, but casting age-appropriate actresses (for the most part at least) really drives home just how young these girls were when they were revolutionizing rock n' roll.
There are some interesting cameos thrown directly at the target audience who remembers pumping their fist in their youth to "I Love Rock N Roll". There is an early scene where Joan is taking a guitar lesson from an old guy who wants to teach her how to strum "On Top of Old Smokey" (because girls don't play electric guitars). I watched this guy talk, and immediately an alarm of recognition and shock went off in my head. "Oh my god!" I leaned over to my friend, "That's Mike Damone from Fast Times at Ridgemont High!" (Indeed, there he is in the cast: Robert Romanus.) Then just as I whispered to my friend that the look of the girl playing Runaways drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve) looked spot-on for the era, and that she would have fit in perfectly with the cast of Little Darlings... then literally, in the next scene, there was Tatum O'Neal herself playing Cherie Currie's mom! Crazy!
If the story is typical, the film itself is engaging, due to solid performances by Stewart (who totally has Jett's physical slouchy guitar-slinging mannerisms down) and Fanning (who, when she removes her stage makeup, shows her alarming youth). The true scene-stealer though is Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley. The band was often accused at the time as being pre-packaged for the masses (which of course is practically standard now). But it is a real hoot to watch this grown man coach teen girls on how to rock with their balls out. Every euphemism for rock he uses is completely sexual, and he says straight-out that rock is the equivalent of a sound orgasm for the listener when it is done right. And you know what? If you've ever had your ass kicked in the best way by true hard rock, you know that this crazy man is absolutely correct. When you hear the roaring strums of Joan Jett's electric guitar, you want to take your devil horns out of your pockets and thrust them in the air. In that sense, The Runaways totally succeeds.
