The Runaways

The Runaways ticks all the boxes for a big music biopic a la Ray or Walk the Line - broken home, childhood trauma, the perils of touring, descent into drink and drug addiction before final redemption. At least, it ticks all the boxes bar one. It fails to capture what it is in the music that is groundbreaking or innovative or good enough to be special. There may or may not be a great movie in the Joan Jett story. Certainly her break through into the male dominated world of guitar-rock suggests an interesting story, but all we get here are glimpses - a guitar teacher who won't teach a girl electric guitar.

But the problem is that this is not the Joan Jett story - Jett is largely a supporting character to the band's singer, Cherie Currie, upon whose autobiography this is based. So what you get is a tale of exploitation of the underaged Currie, which is sad, but ultimately a bit hollow as the film fails to get below the surface of either the characters or the music. And this case, this isn't helped by  structure that is episodic to the extreme, denying any real character arcs.

This cannot be laid at the the feet of the cast. Kirsten Stewart, temporarily escaping from vampires, is convincing as the young Jett, but is left rather on the sidelines. Dakota Fanning completes the transition from child star to teenage actress with a good performance in her most adult role to date, but it is Michael Shannon who comes close to stealing the whole movie as the morally dubious but undoubtedly eccentric manager of the band.

Overall - 6/10 A solid, but ultimately rather hollow music biopic.