Hello Daddy, hello Mom: The rock and roll bloodsport of THE RUNAWAYS

Apparition | 2010 | Rated R | 109 minutes

For those who grew up on the 1970s and who loved authentic, hard-driving punk music, The Runaways offered a welcome alternative to the drivel that was being pawned off on the radio at the time. An all-girl group from Los Angeles, The Runaways consisted primarily of lead singer Cherie Currie, Joan Jett on rhythm guitar, Lita Ford on lead guitar and Sandy West on drums. In their brief four-year career, The Runaways released such hits as “Cherry Bomb,” “Born to Be Bad” and “Queens of Noise,” played tirelessly throughout the club circuit, performed a series of sold-out shows in Japan as well as opened for such acts as The Ramones and Van Halen. It wasn’t that The Runaways were just a novelty act as created by record producer Kim Fowley, capitalizing on the teenage all-girl line-up to draw in eager boys willing to spend their money to attend shows and buy albums, but they were in fact a group of talented musicians who simply kicked ass.

Thus is the story of the new film THE RUNAWAYS by Italian writer and director Floria Sigismondi, who is best known for her work directing the incredibly stylized Marilyn Manson videos for “Tourniquet” and “The Beautiful People.” Sigismondi though handles her first feature film with the finesse of a master, creating a movie that immediately immerses the viewer in the frenetic pace of the rise to rock superstardom and the subsequent downfall, relentlessly taking the audience along for the ride, allowing them to experience the same highs and lows that the real-life characters do on screen. There is never the sense that anything is being glossed over or candy coated here, but rather a film that is as raw and honest as the music at its core is presented. Not a single character is simply glamorized without any substance, and Sigismondi strives to have each of her actors delve to their inner depths to find what is truly at the heart of their character.

It is this approach that makes THE RUNAWAYS one of the better movies to come out recently. While there will of course be a lot of press given to the fact that Kristen Stewart (Joan Jett) cut her trademark hair into the iconic Joan Jett ragged look that she wears throughout the film, or that she and Dakota Fanning (Cherie Currie) share an on-screen kiss, the fact is, both actresses deliver amazing performances that beautifully capture the complexity both girls were experiencing as they were being thrust into the world of fame, money and drugs while at the same time trying to discover who they were as individuals. Stewart and Fanning each give memorable performances that are comprised of such a restrained emotionality of depth that it is hard to imagine any other actresses in either part. Stewart and Fanning make the characters their own and one never gets the sense that they are merely watching just a diluted caricature that is oftentimes seen when real life and iconic individuals are portrayed on the big screen. There is a vulnerability to each character and both Fanning and Stewart excel at balancing that vulnerability with the ferocious drive of their respective characters. The fact is, there are no weak, or even mediocre performances in THE RUNAWAYS, with Sigismondi getting the absolute best out of each of her cast members, including a tremendous performance by Academy Award® nominated actor Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) as record producer Kim Fowley.

With such an incredibly intense focus on building characters of substantial depth, THE RUNAWAYS never feels like your standard biopic that always falls into the trap of trying to cram too large of a time frame into the limited space of the medium. As writer and director Sigismondi explains, “It is a coming of age story of young women kind of getting in too far deep into, and kind of surviving, their time together. They just get too far, lost in their circumstance. But it is not a documentary. I have taken liberties with trying to depict the truth through the events, and finding a story beyond what we know.”

Just as important as the characters are in the film, so too is the music, and THE RUNAWAYS certainly delivers. It is packed full of The Runaways classics, and audiences will be surprised to learn that Fanning does her own singing and Stewart is actually playing the guitar in songs that at times are hard to distinguish from the original recordings. When Stewart was initially brought on for the role she simply explained, “I don’t want to look like an idiot up there. I don’t want to fake it. I want to be able to play these songs.” The result was an added authenticity to the film that allowed for the audience to become invested in the actual characters’ stories instead of being distracted by obvious lip synching to playback or fake playing that would snap a viewer out of the moment of the film and that unfortunately is all too often the case when an actor is asked to sing or play a song in a movie. Beautifully tackling the twelve songs from The Runaways in the film as well as creating such vibrant and dynamic characters marks both Fanning’s and Stewart’s performances as some of the best of the year and is why audiences must see this film.

In the end, THE RUNAWAYS is not just for music lovers. It is a film that is both inspirational and empowering and one that, like the music of The Runaways, easily sets itself apart from the mundaneness of the ordinary.

THE RUNAWAYS opens nationwide on April 9th.

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