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Kristen Stewart is Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning is Cherie Currie in this film about '70s bad-girl rock band, The Runaways. Opens nationwide on Thursday. Click here for session info
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Joan Jett's rock'n'roll story is ground-breaking one of art, liberation and power. But the cinematic portrayal of her life with lead singer Cherie Currie is inspid, emotionless and dull. Director and scriptwriter Floria Sigismondi, who based the film on Currie's memoirs, tries to inject a sense of aloofness in her teenage protagonists, played by a vacant Dakota Fanning and Twilight's Kristen Stewart, in a twitchy, boyish performance.

So much for the overwrought emotional peaks of the vampire flicks. In The Runaways, the cool kids take drugs, get wild on the road and prepare for their lives as rock musicians by fielding flying dog poo, hurled by their zany, mysogyist manager, Kim (played with irreverence by Michael Shannon) with all the excitement of bored third formers. He's the film's saving grace but even his role is bogged down in rock'n'roll cliche.

The problem is the film's lack of any real context. Sure, we know it's the ‘70s because of the bell-bottoms and razored haircuts, the hazy lighting effects. But Jett and Currie's affair is revealed with nary an insight into the emotional confusion it must have caused, and Currie's relationship with her increasingly estranged family is under-developed, just as Jett's meteoric rise to fame is seen from the surface. Jumping on the bed in excitement that their record has made the top 10 is about as far as it goes to explaining the achievements of Jett and her teenage band The Runaways. If it wasn't for the music, this biopic would be a total dud.

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