The Runaways

Lolita alert! Dakota Fanning—yes, the pixieish little girl from I Am Sam and Charlotte's Web—plays the sexed up, drug snorting, crotch grabbing lead singer of the The Runaways, the groundbreaking all-girl rock band that gave Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Lita Ford their start. She's good—the whole cast is—but to quote the great Valerie Cherish: "I don't want to see that!"

Of course, exploiting teen-girl sexuality is the whole point. As the film starts, we meet Joan Jett (Stewart, all slouchy and boyish in leather pants and a shag cut) who plays guitar and wants to start an all-girl band. She corners would-be rock impresario Kim Fowley (the fabulously manic Michael Shannon) and he's taken with the idea, but feels the group is missing one key component: A hot blond lead singer.

Enter Cherie Curry (Fanning), a self-possessed misfit with a flightly mom and an alcoholic father, who favors platform heels and Ziggy Stardust eye makeup. Jett and Fowley spot her at a nightclub.

"Can you sing?" Fowley asks. "Say yes," mouths Jett, already crushing on her new find. "Yes," half-lies Curry. And the group is formed. (The film casually addresses Jett and Curry's sexuality: They slept with any and everyone—including each other.)

In the beat up trailer where they rehearse, Fowley teaches Curry to shake her stuff and snarl and strut like the boys. "This isn't about women's lib," he says. "It's about women's libido!"

The Runaways is all attitude, little film, and that's just fine by me. Director Floria Sigismondi gets everything right—the clothes, the music (not just the Runaways, but The Stooges, Bowie, and the drippy folk that Curry inexplicably favors), the glam-trash seediness of it all.

Drugs were a big part of The Runaways breakup, but also this: Curry confused the kind of confident sexuality of a male rocker with something more kiddy-porn and pin-uppy. It's fine to be sexual as long as you OWN your own sexuality, the film argues. Once you sell out to the male gaze, it's no longer cool, the band breaks up, and the party's over.