The Runaways

The Runaways helped introduce female sexuality to rock and roll. There, I just saved you an hour and 45 minutes.

What's that? You've got some time to kill? Well, I don't recommend wasting it on this film. Actually, it's more of a music video: endless montages of girls playing gigs, taking pills, snorting coke and having sex.

The plot is a "Behind the Music" episode without the interviews. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), motivated by a desire to rebel against their irresponsible parents and bland peers, form a band with help from producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon, whose terrific intensity is wasted in a role that requires him to constantly exhort the girls to be tough and sexy, then tougher and sexier). The girls break all the rules, refuse to be tamed--until it all comes crashing down. I'm bored just typing this.

There's one consolation: a terrific soundtrack feature the Stooges, the Sex Pistols and David Bowie. Really, the whole film is an attempt to capture the intensity of a song like "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog".

But there's a problem with that approach. "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog" is three minutes long. The hook gets in your head, the beat rattles your bones, and then it's done. A movie, on the other hand, is a world you inhabit for two hours. And it helps a lot to have something to draw people into that world: technical mastery, wit, compelling emotions, thought provoking ideas, something. An amateurishly filmed screenplay about teenagers dicking around that took about as long to write as a Ramones song isn't cutting it.