Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning in The Runaways
Kristen Stewart appears to have been luckier than Robert Pattinson in her choice of non-Twilight Saga vehicle.
Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi from singer Cherie Currie's autobiography, The Runaways has received mostly positive notices from US critics. Even those who weren't all that enthusiastic about the film praised the performances, particularly those of Stewart as rocker Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning as Currie, and Michael Shannon as music impresario Kim Fowley.
Also in the Runaways cast: Tatum O'Neal, Stella Maeve, Scout Taylor-Compton, and Bret Cullen.
"So this isn’t an in-depth biopic, even though it’s based on Currie’s 1989 autobiography. It’s more of a quick overview of the creation, rise and fall of the Runaways, with slim character development, no extended dialogue scenes, and a whole lot of rock ‘n’ roll. Its interest comes from Shannon’s fierce and sadistic training scenes as Kim Fowley, and from the intrinsic qualities of the performances by Stewart and Fanning, who bring more to their characters than the script provides.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. (In his review, Ebert also makes a connection between The Runaways and Russ Meyers' 1970 exploitation flick Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which Ebert himself wrote.)
"I have to admit I was completely wrong about Stewart’s ability to play the goddess of punk. Stewart clearly did her homework, because she is fantastic. It’s not just the eerie physical resemblance; Stewart inhabits Jett with every movement she makes. In her first few scenes, the lines coming out of her mouth sounded more petulant than rebellious, and I was worried. But as the movie progresses, the character begins to communicate more with movement than with words and it is phenomenal. The strongest part about her performance is that she captures Joan’s raw, uncompromising love for rock music." Brian Salisbury at Hollywood.com.
"One could argue that the Runaways paved the way for the Madonnas and Lady Gagas of the world—this movie hints at a really fascinating story but just barely scratches at its glittery surface." Sara Vilkomerson in the New York Observer.
"The strength and beauty of The Runaways are that it tells the truth. It doesn't always tell the literal truth about the pioneering all-girl rock band, the Runaways, though it gets the basic facts and most of the details right. More crucially, it conveys precisely what it was like to be young in the mid-1970s, a peculiar juncture in American social history. … And in getting that one thing right – in capturing that strange combination of despair and frustrated energy – it gets everything right." Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle.
"People will probably run to The Runaways, the story of the pioneering seventies girl group, to see Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett earn a bad reputation she doesn’t give a damn about and little Dakota Fanning as 15-year-old Cherie Currie strut around the stage in skimpy outfits ch-ch-chanting that she’s a ch-ch-cherry bomb and join Stewart in some heavy Sapphic smooching. In patches it’s agreeably lurid, but it’s otherwise ho-hum." David Edelstein in New York magazine.
"The most entertaining thing about The Runaways, a highly watchable if mostly run-of-the-mill group biopic, is that its writer-director, Floria Sigismondi, has a sixth sense for how the Runaways were bad-angel icons first and a rock & roll band second." Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly.
Photo: The Runaways (River Road Entertainment)