The Runaways, reviews

Early reviews for The Runaways are generally favorable. Roger Ebert says Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning “bring more to their characters than the script provides” and he likes Michael Shannon’s performance as their manager, Kim Fowley:

Fowley, known in the music clubs of Sunset Strip as a manager on the prowl for young, cheap talent, told [Joan Jett] to give it a shot, and paired her with Currie, whose essential quality is apparently that she was 15. That fit Fowley’s concept of a jailbait band who would appeal because they seemed so young and so tough. He rehearses them in a derelict trailer in the Valley, writing their early hit “Cherry Bomb” on the spot.

Shannon is an actor of uncanny power… Here he’s an evil Svengali, who teaches rock ‘n’ roll as an assault on the audience; the girls must batter their fans into submission or admit they’re losers. He’s like a Marine drill sergeant… He converts Cherie, who begins by singing passively, into a snarling tigress.

As a postscript, Ebert weighs in on casting for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:

Another new movie this week, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” from Sweden, has a role for a young, hostile computer hacker. Stewart has been mentioned for the inevitable Hollywood remake. Reviewing that movie, I doubted she could handle such a tough-as-nails character. Having seen her as Joan Jett, I think she possibly could.

A few more reviews after the cut:

Karina Longworth, Village Voice:

Jett’s unique blend of allure and threat, apathy and determination, gets a mumbling hyper-naturalized take from Stewart‚Äîmore Brando than Bella Swan. Her performance is largely internal‚Äîrisky, considering that the built-in audience that probably made the Twilight star appealing to producers might not know what to make of the actress playing a character with so much going on in her head. Fanning tacks the other way, bravely embracing the physicality of her role, but unable to nail its emotional complexities. (In other words: Stewart’s performance makes you forget the baggage of the actresses’ personal celebrity; Fanning’s foregrounds it.)

…Sigismondi gets the most mood out of chiaroscuro lighting, invisibly elliptic editing, and well-chosen source cues, but actually saying something is harder. All that artsy, abstracted imagery is painted over the skeleton of a predictable rock movie‚Äîwide-eyed rise leads to free-fall, which leads to rebirth and redemption‚Äîand that’s fine. In The Runaways’ first hour, there’s a guttural pleasure to be had in riding waves of rock-movie clich√© spiked with socio-sexual commentary. The movie is at its best when working through the contradictions of teen sex-for-sale, when it’s both turn-on and creep-out. And Sigismondi’s nearly avant-garde visual choices elevate what would be junk food into something more. It’s only when she abandons the expected rock biopic forward motion that the film runs into trouble.

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune:

A rich and surprisingly old-fashioned musical biopic, “The Runaways” has neither the bloat nor the blather of your average Hollywood treatment of stars on the rise. It’s pungent and quick on its feet, capturing the clubs, the shag-heavy interiors and the Farrah-haired vibe of mid-1970s Los Angeles in look and spirit.

Writer-director Floria Sigismondi has worked in photography, sculpture and music videos, and she gets behind the eyes and into the nervous systems of her subjects, without turning them into instruments of easy pathos. Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, two-fifths of The Runaways, take center stage here. One suspects Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, who have never been stronger or freer on screen, were able to bring all sorts of private, teen-idol Sturm und Drang to bear on these real-life teen idols….

The film invests real feeling in telling these intertwined stories. Currie was conceived by Fowley (and, implicitly, herself) as the trashy Valley version of Brigitte Bardot, while Fowley saw Jett’s appeal as more complicated. It was, and is, and it’s why The Runaways meant something beyond the packaging. The component parts of “The Runaways” are familiar ‚Äî rehearsal scenes, backstage trysts, onstage triumphs ‚Äî but it has an exceptional hangout factor. The characters and the performers simply are good company, even in extremis.

We’ll update with excerpts from other reviews as they roll in throughout the day.