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88A 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.
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83The Runaways isn't just about rock 'n' roll; it IS rock 'n' roll, as loud, sexy, sometimes sloppy and ultimately exhilarating as the music can be.
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80The best rock 'n' roll movies are less about strict authenticity than about capturing a vibe. And The Runaways gets the vibe just right, from its opening shot.
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75Its interest comes from Shannon's fierce and sadistic training scenes as Kim Fowley, and from the intrinsic qualities of the performances by Stewart and Fanning, who bring more to their characters than the script provides.
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75The strength and beauty of The Runaways are that it tells the truth.
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75It's an artistic and authentic evocation of an era but a rather surface-skimming story of the '70s all-girl rock band fronted by Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. If anything, it just makes you want to know more about Jett's back story and Currie's subsequent life.
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75A soaring, sympathetic ode to the outlaws, subversives and insurgents who occupy the edges of popular culture, making them safe for everyone else's dreams.
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75In rock, it's about the attitude as much as the music. In some cases, more so. And the Runaways were all attitude.
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75The three leads provide convincing performances, with Dakota Fanning being the standout.
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75The Runaways captures the sleaze and innocence of the era and has some still-relevant things to say about the conflict between girl-rocker empowerment and exploitation.
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75It is a well-acted and vivid re-creation of a dark, downbeat era when "girls don't play electric guitar," and you had to be someone pretty tough and pretty special to try it.
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75Because the movie captures the period so well and argues so convincingly that the Runaways' very existence was revolutionary, it doesn't have to exaggerate the highs and lows to create a more salable story.
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75Much of The Runaways plays out in the key of dreary. But there's a flinty integrity in this movie's look at the rock grind, and Stewart and Fanning are intensely watchable.
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70The vigor and pace is electric, and the movie features three showy performances by Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon.
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70The Runaways broke new ground. And if "The Runaways" doesn't, it's still a movie worth watching - and listening to.
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In The Runaways' first hour, there's a guttural pleasure to be had in riding waves of rock-movie cliché 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.
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70The movie may be a little too tame in the end, but at its best it is just wild enough.
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70The wispy insubstantiality of The Runaways can't be blamed on its cast--Fanning, Stewart, and Shannon are all good in their roles, even if their range is never tested. Ultimately, maybe it's OK that there's not much below the surface of this great-looking but shallow movie.
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70A conventionally enjoyable making-and-breaking-of-the-band saga.
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70Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) steals his every scene as the aphorism-spouting Fowley while Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning often fade into the 70s wallpaper as guitarist Joan Jett and front woman Cherie Currie.
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67The Runaways nails both the glammy, SoCal temper of the mid-Seventies and the metallurgic tempering of the first all-girl rock band in America.
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67The most entertaining thing about The Runaways, a highly watchable if mostly run-of-the-mill group biopic, is that its writer-director, Floria Sigismondi, has a sixth sense for how the Runaways were bad-angel icons first and a rock & roll band second.
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63Say what you will about the Runaways – they never played it safe. The movie does.
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63An entertaining but routine rock flick.
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63Despite Sigismondi's fresh eye, feminist perspective, and rapport with actors, The Runaways feels like a long-form music video, recycling every trope from the doomed-rocker handbook.
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63For her part, Stewart has Jett down pat: her strut, her slouch, her sexiness. This is a performance that goes far beyond Jett's shag haircut.
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60Fanning's Currie grabs the spotlight immediately, and never lets go.
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60Cringe-making fun for survivors of the '70s. For the younger majority: a familiar rise and fall of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll enlivened by the gender reversal and performances.
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60There's lots of volume in these tunes--the soundtrack is killer--and at least everyone gets their rocks off.
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60Far from a perfect movie, but there are moments when it comes about as close to catching the visceral kick of the pre-iPod rock experience as any film I've ever seen.
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60The problem with The Runaways is that they went with the wrong girl.
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50The Runaways ultimately feels too lethargic and conventional for the wild story it tells.
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50It's when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.
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50A movie that tells -- or rather, circles -- the story of the band's formation and abortive career.
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50In patches it's agreeably lurid, but it's otherwise ho-hum.
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50They're now the first major all-girl punk band to inspire a bleary, excessive, and altogether mediocre big-screen biography.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 3 out of 13
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AlejandroC.5
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AdamT.0
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JohnB.7