The Runaways — my review

I just got back from seeing The Runaways at the Cinema Dome at the Arclight in Hollywood. I’ve seen a lot shit movies there, just because I love the place — I went there to see Indiana Jones and the Ruined Childhood Icon, and to sleep through Where the Wild Things Are. So if anything even halfway decent-looking is played there I’ll bite. Luckily, I wanted to see The Runaways anyway, so it was an easy call.

The most striking thing about the movie was how little dialogue was in it. Literally, if you wrote down only the dialogue, I’d imagine it would take up about 15 pages. And almost all of it would be preceeded by:

KIM FOWLEY
(screaming, in drippy eye makeup)

It comes as no surprise that the director, Floria Sigismondi’s, previous work is almost all music videos.

Anyway, here are the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Kristen Stewart! I have never liked Kristen Stewart in a movie before. She’s always too boring & brooding for me to believe or care about. But cast her as Joan Jett and hardly let her talk and the kid comes alive! Of course, I secretly interpreted this to mean I am right about her lesbianosity — finally she doesn’t have to pretend to want to make out with Robert Pattinson’s filthy hair, and gets to just be her cool ambitious baby-dyke-self.
• Dakota Fanning! If Kristen Stewart got to play herself as Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning got to do the same as lonely icon Cherie Currie. The whole “pretty girl forced to grow up too fast” didn’t seem to be a great stretch for her, but more than that she played the shit out of this character. That is no small feat when America has literally watched you grow up.
• The costumes Fuck Sex And The City, this is the fashion eye candy movie for me. I left thinking “We should all be wearing satin jumpsuits all the time! Why don’t we do that!??”

Cons:

• Lita Ford — Not enough Lita Ford! The movie was only 105 minutes — they could have given a little more screen time to the queen of 80s metal. At least a couple of guitar solos!
• The Bassist - Rather than use any or all of the actual Runaways bassists (including Micki Steele of The Bangles), they made an amalgamation of them all and called her “Robin”. Then they cast Alia Shawat (Arrested Development, Whip It) and only gave her one (ONE!) line. “We don’t play that kind of music.” Lame. That move works a lot better when the bassists you are glossing over were never in The Bangles, and the actress you cast was never in Arrested Development.
• Cherry Bomb — If you devote a whole scene to the creation of a song, you can’t play it over and over through the rest of the movie. It’s done! Find a couple of others! Google it, Floria.
• I dropped my string cheese on the floor right at the beginning, so I didn’t have a snack ALL MOVIE.