The Runaways: Kristen Stewart Transitions From Vampires to Jailbait Rockers

Apparition Pictures

Fanning (left) and Stewart live the high life.

Details

Opens at Guild 45 and other theaters, Fri., March 19. Rated R. 100 minutes.

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More About

• The Runaways (Movie)
• Floria Sigismondi
• Dakota Fanning
• Celebrity Couples
• Celebrity News

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There's a stunt element to the casting of The Runaways: a punked-up, barely-legal Kristen Stewart and a still-underage, barely-dressed Dakota Fanning begging for street cred by playing dress-up as, respectively, Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, frontgirls of the '70s-era teen proto-punk sensation, the Runaways. Watch sweet little Dakota strut around in a corset! Look at the chick from Twilight kissing girls and snorting coke! But under the stylish direction of Floria Sigismondi, what may be a stunt is also a movie worth taking seriously. The film opens in L.A. circa 1975. Brought together by weirdo/record producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), the girls develop a "product" based on "women's libido" in place of women's lib. Cherie and Joan become fast friends, drinking pilfered booze under a decaying Hollywood sign, Joan the tomboy Clyde to Cherie's glam Bonnie. With "I want an orgasm!" as their Fowley-dictated rallying cry, the pushing-16-year-olds sell the notion that they're full of cum; young and dumb, it takes them awhile to figure out the dark side of hawking their sexual curiosity. Sigismondi uses abstract imagery to elevate what is otherwise a predictable rock movie. Wide-eyed rise leads to free fall, which leads to rebirth and redemption—and that's fine. There's a guttural pleasure to be had in riding waves of rock-movie cliché spiked with socio-sexual commentary. Only in the latter half, when she abandons forward motion and junks the visual daring and feminist questioning, does the film run into trouble.