The Runaways (2010)

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!  This movie has nothing to do with him or his message, unless you want to count an all-girl rock band as striving for equality.      This isn't a bad movie.  I know it has Kristen Stewart in it.  I was surprised too.  It's not a great movie, but it's not bad.  It made me curious about the band, which it was supposed to do and was otherwise competent.

In the late 1970's, teenaged Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is tired of being told that "girls don't play electric guitar."  She doesn't want to be Farrah Fawcett, she wants to be a badass.  So when she spots music producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) hanging around her favorite club, she seizes the opportunity to introduce herself.  Fowley is mildly interested and pushes her off onto Sandy West (Stella Maeve), a drummer, and tells them to practice.  He likes their sound but feels like they need more sex appeal, so he recruits jailbait bombshell Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) to be the lead singer.  With the addition of Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Robin (Alia Shawkat) the bassist, The Runaways is complete.  They even start to see real success, including a tour to Japan, but Cherie's increasing drug use as well as Fowley's decision to make her the focus of the band's marketing begins to alienate her from the others.

It's a tale at least as old as rock-and-roll.  Balancing all the personalities in a band is a tricky thing and sometimes they just implode.  As always, the music is what is important and the soundtrack to this movie is fantastic.  The movie is a rental, at best.  It depends on how much you enjoy Dakota Fanning and a makeup-wearing, scenery-chewing Michael Shannon.  He is outstandingly despicable in this.