Woefully light, by-the-numbers treatment of one of the most interesting and influential bands in rock history

Rating: 4/10 (3 August 2010)

So here we have a potentially very interesting, very gripping story, helmed by some very talented young performers, backed by some of the coolest, most influential music ever made --- it seems ahead of its time even now. That it was written in the mid-'70s makes it even more unbelievable.
What a tragedy to hand all of this gold over to a relatively inexperienced music video director who has crafted a movie so completely void of honest emotion and meaningful, non-clichéd, dialog that it is almost staggering in its basic ineptitude.
What's really amazing about this movie is that it doesn't show us ANYTHING but standard made-for-TV-tabloid-BS. And perhaps some of that comes from the source material, but guess what? It's the screenwriter and director's job to turn that into something interesting, to find something of a soul in it, and Sigismondi fails completely at this.
We have the Bad Homelife scene, the Trial By Fire bust-out gig, the Sink or Swim audition, the Drug Crackup Scene. It's really a shame that Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning are so completely wasted here. They do their best but there is nothing but scene after scene with little or no expository dialog, leaving nothing but trite scenarios to flounder in.
Sigismondi even kind of fails at presenting the band in concert footage (isn't that what she know how to do?). It's hard to tell many times if the performers are really engaged in what's happening on stage or if they're having any fun. The camaraderie seems noticeably missing except between Stewart and Fanning who again, have few meaningful exchanges.
The many-talented Michael Shannon even comes off like a cardboard cut-out of a the Nazi Producer. I mean, we've all heard the stories about Kim Fowley, but even he couldn't have been this one-dimensional and boring.
It's very ironic because The Runaways were anything but the same old stereotypical crap --- especially in 1975! Why? A) There were no hard rocking all-girl bands, really, before them, that were commercially successful; B) There were no girl bands that blatantly sold their sexuality while still maintaining a solid artistic integrity (solid playing and songwriting).
That's what really stinks about The Runaways (which I admit I'm overrating at 4) --- you're damn sure there's more to this story than the same surface eye candy you've always known about. And not getting it is just infuriating.