A Joan Jett hagiography masquerading as a Runaways biopic

Perhaps its simply ironic justice that a group so thoroughly abused by their managers, the press and each other would, in the ostensible retelling of their story, be so thoroughly abused by their filmmaker and two of their members. The most obvious clue to the on-going animosity between the band members is that bassist Jackie Fox is spitefully renamed in film as the fictional “Robin.” This follows latter-day bassist Victory Tischler Blue being denied the use of original Runaways studio recordings for her documentary Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways. Add to that the near complete absence of dialog for guitarist Lita Ford and drummer Sandy West in this “biopic,” and you have a film that posits the Runaways as a springboard for Joan Jett’s solo stardom. Even vocalist Cherie Currie, upon whose biography this script is ostensibly based, has her story short-changed in the telling.

The screenplay, credited to first-time feature director Floria Sigismondi, is a mess. The motivations and timeline are muddled, and the band’s story isn’t given any context. Was the band famous or only infamous? What led up to Cherie quitting the band? What happened to Lita and Sandy after The Runaways (or, for that matter, during their time in the Runaways)? The action and plot points often feel made up, rather than based on actual people and events. Worse, the characters’ unending moroseness suggests there wasn’t a moment of joy in the Runaways’ career, and it remains unclear why any of the girls stayed involved in the band. The pacing is tortoise-like and the film’s modern style fails to capture the mood of the times. The dialog and direction often reduce the ‘70s rock milieu to trite shorthand and communicate little feel for the period. The fictional Foxes, in which Currie was featured alongside Jodie Foster in 1980, is a better window into the hard partying hopelessness of late-70s Los Angeles.

Were the script and direction the only weak link, the film’s leads might still have been entertaining, but they’re out of their depth. Kristen Stewart shows little conviction as the firebrand Joan Jett. Dakota Fanning is no better, showing little charisma, sex appeal or rebel spirit, and often looks scared of her role rather than scared within it as an acted emotion. The real-life Currie is compelling and authoritative in the DVD’s making-of documentary, showing Fanning’s characterization to be docile and lost in comparison. The film would have been better cast without movie stars, so as to allow the actual band members’ characters to take center stage. Michael Shannon provides a bravura performance as Kim Fowley, but Sigismondi gives him only one note to play, and his character quickly dissolves into repetition. The script fails to provide any of the characters dramatic arcs – no one is transformed, and when Currie declares that she wants her life back, the viewer is left to wonder why she wants to return to a life that was portrayed as being terrible to begin with.

The historical liberties and omissions are numerous, including the fictionalized introduction of Currie’s infamous corset on the band’s 1977 tour of Japan. Currie’s been widely quoted as having purchased the item in Los Angeles and she can seen wearing it in a 1976 promotional video of “Cherry Bomb.”  More damaging to the film’s credibility, the transformational sexual assault that Currie details in her autobiography is barely alluded to. Jackie Fox’s departure is necessarily skipped, since the bassist was skipped altogether as a character in the film, and the film’s end skips past the Runaways initial post-group activities, including Currie’s solo album, her album (and hit single) with sister Marie, Joan Jett’s trip to the UK, her work with Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones, the recording of her 1980 eponymous debut, and Lita Ford’s emergence as a metal guitar goddess. Instead, the film rushes to Jett’s canonization as a solo superstar.

The film’s credit-roll bios of Currie, Jett and Fowley provides the final FU to the rest of the band, whose contributions and post-band lives were apparently insufficiently important to merit mention. One might excuse the mythologizing of the Runaways as the first all-girl rock band (discounting Goldie & The Gingerbreds, the Feminine Complex, Fanny, and numerous garage-rock bands cataloged on Girls With Guitars), but the notion that Joan Jett was the band’s sole artiste serves only to propagate the petty jealousies that tore the group apart in the first place. Floria Sigismondi’s deft work as a modern music video director fails to provide the eye needed to sympathetically capture the feel of the 1970s, and in doing so she fails to tell the Runaways story in a way that does the band justice. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]