The Runaways (film)

The Runaways
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Floria Sigismondi
Produced by	Bill Pohlad Art Linson John Linson Joan Jett Kenny Laguna
Written by	Floria Sigismondi
Starring	Dakota Fanning Kristen Stewart Stella Maeve Scout Taylor-Compton Michael Shannon
Music by	Lillian Berlin
Cinematography	Benoît Debie
Editing by	Richard Chew
Distributed by	Apparition
Release date(s)	January 24, 2010 (2010-01-24) (Sundance) March 19, 2010 (2010-03-19) (United States)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million
Box office	$4,678,222

The Runaways is a 2010 American biographical film about the 1970s all-girl rock band of the same name. The film was written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, who based the screenplay on the book Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway by the band's original lead vocalist Cherie Currie. Dakota Fanning plays Currie, Kristen Stewart plays rhythm guitarist and vocalist Joan Jett, and Michael Shannon plays record producer Kim Fowley. The film depicts the formation of the band in 1975 and focuses on the relationship between Currie and Jett until Currie's departure from the band.

Plot

Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), a teenager in Los Angeles, California desperately wants to be a rock star. She idolizes David Bowie and cuts her hair and dons make-up so she will resemble Bowie's Aladdin Sane character. At her high school talent show, she lip syncs to "Lady Grinning Soul" and, despite some hecklers in the audience, wins.

Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is a bisexual teenager who also dreams of rock stardom. At a club one night, she meets record producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) and talks about starting an all-girl rock band. Kim is interested and introduces Joan to Sandy West (Stella Maeve), a drummer. Joan and Sandy become friends and start jamming when Kim suggests that they recruit a hot blonde in the vein of Brigitte Bardot. Kim and Joan comb Los Angeles' clubs to look for hot blondes and discover Cherie. They ask if she wants to be in a band and she accepts. Then they tell her to come to auditions in a trailer park in the San Fernando Valley.

Cherie learns Suzi Quatro's "Fever" and goes to audition, but the band is disappointed at her choice of song. Instead, Kim and Joan write "Cherry Bomb", on the spot, for Cherie to audition with. Cherie sings it and, after improving, is part of the band, named the Runaways, joined by Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) on lead guitar and Robin (Alia Shawkat) on bass.

The Runaways are soon signed to Mercury Records and release a hit album. Due to the album's success, they travel to Japan to play a concert. After their performance, Lita throws magazines at Cherie that have pictures of her. Cherie is shocked because she thought the articles were to cover the whole band. As Lita, Cherie, and Joan argue, crazy fans break through the window and chase the girls out of the building. Cherie's drug problems become worse. She overdoses in the hotel, collapses in an elevator and is sent to the hospital. Upon arriving back in the United States, Cherie begins to abuse her alcoholic father's painkillers.

At the studio recording their next album, Cherie has a breakdown and refuses to play. Lita insults her and though Joan defends her, Cherie quits the band. Joan is outraged, and the Runaways are finished. Cherie returns home while Joan starts her own band, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Cherie collapses again in a phone booth in a supermarket parking lot. At the hospital, her sister, Marie, visits her and tells her to get her stuff straight.

A few years later, Cherie has landed a 9 to 5 job. She hears Joan's cover of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" on the radio and calls the station, where Joan is visiting for interviews. After an awkward conversation between Joan, Cherie, and radio host Rodney Bingenheimer (Keir O'Donnell), Cherie says her goodbyes and continues working, smiling when Joan's next song, "Crimson and Clover", comes on the radio.

Note
^{^} Robin is a fictional character created for the movie as Jackie Fox, the original bassist, refused usage of her name.^{[citation needed]}

Cast

(Left to right) Floria Sigismondi, Cherie Currie, Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart

• Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie
• Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett
• Stella Maeve as Sandy West
• Scout Taylor-Compton as Lita Ford
• Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley
• Johnny Lewis as Scottie, roadie and love interest to Cherie Currie
• Alia Shawkat as Robin, the band's fictional bassist (Jackie Fox was not portrayed).
• Riley Keough, as Marie Currie
• Hannah Marks as Tammy, a groupie
• Keir O'Donnell as Rodney Bingenheimer
• Tatum O'Neal as Marie Harmon, a singer and Cherie's mother
• Brett Cullen as Mr Currie, Cherie's father
• Brendan Sexton III as Derek
• Robert Romanus as the guitar teacher

Release

Apparition acquired distribution rights to The Runaways in December 2009. It was slated to open nationwide March 19, 2010, in 1,400 theaters. The film's world premiere took place on January 24, 2010, at the Sundance Film Festival. Jett performed live in Park City the evening before the premiere and premiere night. Its Hollywood premiere took place March 11 at the ArcLight Hollywood. Its theatrical release in the United States began March 19.

Box office and home media

The Runaways opened in the United States on Friday, March 19, 2010, at 244 theaters. Its opening weekend gross was $805,115—placing it at #18 at the box office—averaging $3,300 per theater, and most of its audience that weekend were 25 or older. Apparition changed their marketing strategy and began to target "older arthouse" demographics April 9, by which time The Runaways had grossed approximately $2 million. It left theaters June 3 with a domestic gross of $3,573,653. Variety reported that the film's underperformance at the box office could have been due to underfunded marketing and a failure to find an audience with either an age demographic that would remember the band or with fans of Stewart for her performance in Twilight (2008).

The Runaways was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on July 20, 2010.

Critical reception

The Runaways received generally favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 68% of 171 sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 6.2 out of 10. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 65 based on 35 reviews. The performances of Stewart, Fanning and Shannon were picked out as some of the film's strongest elements. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle noted that the film "doesn't always tell the literal truth" about the band, but felt that "[m]ore crucially, it conveys precisely what it was like to be young in the mid-1970s [...] And in getting that one thing right—in capturing that strange combination of despair and frustrated energy—it gets everything right." Roger Ebert gave The Runaways 3 stars out of 4, praising the performances of Shannon, Stewart and Fanning, while writing that the film's visuals and music "[helped] cover an underwritten script and many questions about the characters" which he found slimly developed. Dennis Harvey of Variety gave the film a positive review, commenting that it "proves [to be a] conventionally enjoyable making-and-breaking-of-the-band saga" and goes on to compliment the cinematography and soundtrack. A. O. Scott of The New York Times felt that Sigismondi "infuses crucial scenes with a rough, energetic spirit, and shows a willingness to accept the contradictions inherent in the material without prurience, moralism or too much sentimentality." Even if The Runaways "hits a few too many standard music biography beats" and "may be a little too tame in the end", he added, "at its best it is just wild enough." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B− and wrote that Sigismondi's "sixth sense for how the Runaways were bad-angel icons first and a rock & roll band second" was the "most entertaining thing about" the film, which he described as a "highly watchable if mostly run-of-the-mill group biopic". Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times felt that the film, which she described as "a street-level snapshot" of the titular band's creation, should have featured Jett's story instead of staying "too narrowly focused" on that of Currie. David Edelstein of New York Magazine gave the film a less positive review, commenting that "since the music itself is secondary, there’s not a lot to this story," and adding "It’s Fanning’s movie: You can taste the ex–child actor’s relish for playing jailbait." Time magazine praised the acting in the film, in particular the work of Dakota Fanning, stating that Fanning "turns in a performance of startling maturity", "seduces us utterly" and is "like a mini--Meryl Streep".

Soundtrack

Music From The Motion Picture The Runaways
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	March 23, 2010
Recorded	1966–2009
Genre	Hard rock, rock
Length	50:00
Label	Atlantic

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic

Music from the Motion Picture The Runaways was released on March 23, 2010.

No.	Title	Artist	Length
1.	"Roxy Roller"	Nick Gilder	2:49
2.	"The Wild One"	Suzi Quatro	2:51
3.	"It's a Man's Man's Man's World" (Live)	MC5	5:13
4.	"Rebel Rebel"	David Bowie	4:31
5.	"Cherry Bomb"	Dakota Fanning	2:19
6.	"Hollywood"	The Runaways	2:58
7.	"California Paradise"	Dakota Fanning	2:59
8.	"You Drive Me Wild"	The Runaways	3:22
9.	"Queens of Noise"	Dakota Fanning & Kristen Stewart	3:13
10.	"Dead End Justice"	Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning	6:36
11.	"I Wanna Be Your Dog"	The Stooges	3:13
12.	"I Wanna Be Where the Boys Are" (Live in Japan)	The Runaways	2:57
13.	"Pretty Vacant"	Sex Pistols	3:17
14.	"Don't Abuse Me"	Joan Jett	3:37

The film also includes "Lady Grinning Soul" by David Bowie, "Fujiyama Mama" by Wanda Jackson, "Do You Wanna Touch Me" by Gary Glitter, "Gimme Danger" by Iggy & The Stooges, "Vincent" by Don McLean, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", "Bad Reputation" and "I Want You" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Kristen Stewart also covers the Runaways' "I Love Playin' With Fire" in the film. The film included 34 credited songs, leaving 20 out of the official soundtrack, and did not have an official composer.

See also

• Edgeplay: A film about The Runaways

External links

• Official website
• The Runaways at the Internet Movie Database
• The Runaways at AllRovi
• The Runaways at Box Office Mojo
• The Runaways at Metacritic
• The Runaways at Rotten Tomatoes