It’s 1975 when all the rage was to be unique: pink-painted hair, chopped, shaggy, or big and frizzy, clothes fuschia pink and lots of sequence…big platform shoes. David Bowie was the out-there hero. 1975 was pre-disco days – Studio 54. And in Los Angeles, a man named Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) convinced five teen girls that if they could sell a crazy-mean, tough attitude, with sexy untouchable, they would be huge stars. “Even bigger than the Beatles.” And so Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) slams on her electric guitar while Cherie Curry (Dakota Fanning) belts sexy lyrics into a microphone. We never learn much about the girls’ history in this film – why they left home to perform – aside from Cherie’s M.I.A. mother (Tatum O’Neal) and her alcoholic father. The problem with this plot is while the actresses give stellar performances, there aren’t any trailblazer moments. Long before the Runaways (who later became Joan Jett and the Blackhearts) these genetic girls had much bigger contenders like the sexy and naughty (for their time) Shangri Las with “Leader of the Pack” or even Belinda Carlisle and the GoGo’s. There’s no real point to the marketing of these girls who only fizzled in the end, though Fanning takes a huge leap of a role to be a drug-infested grownup. But it’s Kristen Stewart (Twilight queen) who has true stage authority. Turns out she taught herself all of the songs in the movie (including the hit single “Cherry Bomb.”). Three tiaras
