The Bomb That Took Down the Jett on the Runaway

Rating: 5/10 (3 March 2013)

Well, I completed my homework assignment of watching The Runaways. Can I go out and play now?
The objective of the task a friend gave me was to see a different side of Kristen Stewart since I thought I hadn't see a movie with her in it yet – outside the Twilight series, that is. Turns out, yeah, I did see Jumper and Into the Wild, but I do not recall her in those. Hereyou'd be blind not to notice her even while she's fairly mellow. As always, it appears.
Now, I'm not a Joan Jett fan, though I do enjoy her music when it comes on. I'm so ignorant on the topic of her past or present, I thought it was just her and some backup chicks. I didn't know anything about "The Runaways" band, nor the sequel: "Joan Jett and the Blackhearts." (I guess I was right on my thoughts for that one.)
Well, despite my ignorance and the fact this movie really wasn't about Joan, I enjoyed the ride of the girls wanting to develop a band from virtually nothing into sexy stardom. And they didn't waste any time jumping right into the destructive drug usage.
Perhaps this movie was accurate, because not only was Joan Jett one of the major producers, she apparently was on set all the time pointing out the accuracies. If this is true, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, it was a pretty dull ride with so little happening, the movie seemed to be stretched out as far as it could to make this a feature length. Again, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't the most "explosive" biography I've seen. (In fact, the original poster's tagline was: "It's 1975 and they're about to explode." Hardly.)
But, it did have fairly decent acting all around with, surprisingly the best performance in a movie about an all-girl band was Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley. He was sure out there, but I thought he was above the rest. And the rest wasn't that bad: the two leads, Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie were very goodat looking melancholy all the time. Sure, that, again, might be accurate; these real life ladies might have been a bit of a couple of downers. I did believe in their performances, but they didn't grab me to care one way or another where they ended up.
The soundtrack, of course, was killer and the decades old scenery believable. I would recommend this movie of the (sorta) rise, (sorta) fall and (sorta) reinvention of an all (sorta) kickass girls band – they really didn't see that badass, by the way.
And, yeah, it was nice to see some range out of Stewart, even though in the two big rolls I've seen her in were sorrowful and downhearted rolls.