Review of The Runaways (2010) by Gareth M — 19 Jan 2011

Somewhere out there is a 'Music Biopic' proforma with blank spaces for names, and this was the entire scripting process for The Runaways. It starts with the characters (Dakota Fanning lucklustre as Cherrie Curry, Kristen Stewart faring slightly better as Joan Jett) feeling like outcasts, then they suffer tradegy, find their voices in music, have humble beginnings, strike it big with a hit, become perform giant shows, party to hard, hit rock bottom, disband and then skip forward to the future when they got it all worked out.

While the narrative is vanilla, the presentation is occasionaly imaginative and the movie does fill with energy whenever the band take to the stage. Plenty of time has been dedicated to these scenes and the actors completely embody the performers. It's a shame that this energy never seems to translate to the remaining scenes, although the characters are given such slim motivations and simple backstory it's as much the fault of the material as the actors.

The final act really drops the ball when the story and character arcs get wrapped up in a series of disjointed scenes - Cherrie leaves the band, seen staggering around a grocery store on drugs in the next scene, been in hospital for a year the next and then two year later working in a cake store. Makes the end of the story feel like a hurried footnote than a real conclusion.