Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning bring The Runaways
Put Another Dime in the Jukebox, Baby.
We’re looking forward to many things in 2010 but one of the most anticipated film events of the year is the Kristen Stewart project The Runaways. That there is hardly anyone growing up today who loves rock n roll that is not aware of the role Joan Jett, Cherie Currie and Lita Ford played in establishing women in a male dominated art form is a given.
A lot of us would have killed for Ellen Page as Jett, but Stewart is what we are getting so we better learn to live with it. It’s theatrical, baby. And not only is it being written and directed by a music-video director, Floria Sigismondi (best known for her video for Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People,”) Try to imagine what would happen if Joan Jett in 1975 met Kristen Stewart in 2008? I dunno, but I bet Stewart would walk away with tattoo imprint all over her face.
Less a groundbreaker girl band biopic than say, a prequel to the as yet to be conceived if ever Joan Jett story, The Runaways gets the hark rock sound right, but goes soft when tapping into those teen temperaments or taking the musical temperature of the times. Not to mention Jett herself hanging around as executive producer, usually the kiss of death when it comes to objectively fleshing yourself out as protagonist in a movie. Which may explain the wrongheaded, diversionary focus on messed up sidekick Cheri Currie instead. I loved a lot of this but much of it was a real drag.
