The Runaways comes off as too much like Walk the Line and not enough like Sid and Nancy. The result is easily watchable, but it could have said so much more about the contradicting messages of the band.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 22, 2023

The film is well acted and well made, but the interest is more historical rather than musical. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 20, 2022

Gorgeous imagery.

| Sep 1, 2021

A biopic that's exploitative rather than being about exploitation.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 20, 2021

Based on the memoir Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story and executive produced by Joan Jett, this all-girl rock band biopic hits all the right notes in all the right places.

| Mar 24, 2021

The real star of the film is the music.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 30, 2020

Stunning. Hypnotic. On the money.

| Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 21, 2020

Falls into the usual sorts of narrative traps, including expositional overkill, flimsy character building, and the inexorable rise and subsequent descent into the tedious maelstrom of excess.

| Original Score: 5.4/10 | Aug 11, 2020

There are some wonderful emotional developments between these young women, forming bonds off stage, before kicking ass on. They are thrust into unknown territory while navigating their own sexuality and identities, and that's the real heart of the film.

| Apr 8, 2020

The Runaways is as stylishly honey-toned and authentically grubby as it is kick ass in its portrait of female energy chained to the universally cathartic force of rock 'n' roll.

| Jan 23, 2020

While the offstage passion between Jett and Currie gives the film its emotional drive, their in-concert erotic aggression is an occasion for elegantly examining the line between self-expression and self-exploitation.

| Sep 5, 2018

It's a too-familiar rags-to-riches-to-rags tale without much substance. But it looks and sounds good, and now and again it rocks.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2018

The audience is meant to relate to Jett's indignation-the band's success should hinge on their sound, not their looks-but it feels like a bogus position, since we, in watching the scene on the lawn, have been made complicit in Cherie's objectification.

| Feb 8, 2018

The acting makes this movie. Too often in a music movie the soundtrack takes first precedence, but here the acting is the center of the movie.

| Oct 24, 2017

I find it the worst kind of form over function, in which all involved seem to have forgotten that the aesthetic rebellions of the time stemmed from a deeper defiance of the status quo.

| Jul 18, 2017

A full-throttle joyride through fame's treacherous trenches.

| Oct 7, 2016

Fanning makes Currie's fame- and pharmaceutical-fueled transformation/liberation at once exhilarating and terrifying.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 8, 2012

| Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

... A typical story of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but it's told with style and energy that keep it from bogging down amid the clichs.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 5, 2011