The Runaways

I am one of the lucky few that got to see any early screening of this biopic about Joan Jett’s first band, The Runaways. I was also extremely honored to have Joan Jett actually attend the screening and speak afterwards. Now, I don’t want to make this about my personal experience, but let me just say, she’s pretty awesome. Just cool, in the original meaning of the word. Now on to the movie.

First off, don’t skip this one just because you may have hated Kristen Stewart in The Twilight Saga. Cut her some slack, Bella Swan is written as a pretty annoying character, how’s she supposed to play it? Anyway, her portrayal is appropriately nothing like the character she plays in the vampire flicks. You may have heard the same rumors as me, that Joan Jett made Stewart cry on set, but quite frankly, I don’t care. Stewart had a great performance. After seeing Stewart in the movie and then being able to see the woman she was playing standing in front of me in real life, I was impressed. Jett also had nothing but good things to say about Stewart and her performance. And even if all this doesn’t quite convince you, let me tell you, this movie is more about Dakota Fanning’s character, Cherie Currie, than Jett. And Ms. Fanning is all grown up. I’m sure she’ll be sick of hearing that by the end of publicity for this movie, but there’s no way of avoiding the subject. Fanning is edgy. I know, who would have guessed that that little charmer from Uptown Girls would grow up and put on a corset and lingerie and perform rock ‘n roll; not to mention portray a hard into drugs and extremely sexually free young woman. Not me, but she pulled it out. She committed to the role, and I believed it. Both also did excellent jobs actually performing the music themselves. That’s all Fanning when you see her singing.

It’s also hard for me to resist a movie with music, especially such great music. And, the fact that the women producing this music were starting a revolution for women in the industry only left me cheering for them more. There was definitely a sense of authenticity to the time, and all the costumes were believable and very stylish (some even appearing to be exact replicas from the actual band). There were a few too many hazy, drug-induced scenes for me, but it did give you a kind of rush (most certainly intended) that can somewhat put you in the minds of the girls in the band. Because of it's genre it also tends to focus a lot more on the "wild" lives of the girls than the music, something that you can accept as part of a rock 'n roll movie or hate. But, if you’d like to see a piece of rock ‘n roll history and the making of a band (and some great actors), I wouldn’t miss it when it comes to theaters.

If you want to see the original Runaways perform "Cherrybomb" go to this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG5LkU4646E

There are better recordings of it though. You can find one if you google cherry bomb runaways.