Runaways, The

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A 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.

St. Petersburg Times Steve Persall

The 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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The 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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The strength and beauty of The Runaways are that it tells the truth.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The 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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It'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.

Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore

It 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.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Because 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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In rock, it’s about the attitude as much as the music. In some cases, more so. And the Runaways were all attitude.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A soaring, sympathetic ode to the outlaws, subversives and insurgents who occupy the edges of popular culture, making them safe for everyone else's dreams.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Much 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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Its 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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The three leads provide convincing performances, with Dakota Fanning being the standout.

Village Voice Karina Longworth

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.

Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz

The Runaways broke new ground. And if "The Runaways" doesn't, it's still a movie worth watching - and listening to.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The vigor and pace is electric, and the movie features three showy performances by Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon.

Variety Dennis Harvey

A conventionally enjoyable making-and-breaking-of-the-band saga.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Michael 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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie may be a little too tame in the end, but at its best it is just wild enough.

Slate Dana Stevens

The 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.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The Runaways nails both the glammy, SoCal temper of the mid-Seventies and the metallurgic tempering of the first all-girl rock band in America.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The 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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

An entertaining but routine rock flick.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Despite 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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Say what you will about the Runaways – they never played it safe. The movie does.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

For 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.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Fanning's Currie grabs the spotlight immediately, and never lets go.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

The problem with The Runaways is that they went with the wrong girl.

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

There’s lots of volume in these tunes--the soundtrack is killer--and at least everyone gets their rocks off.

Boxoffice Magazine Ray Greene

Far 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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

In patches it’s agreeably lurid, but it’s otherwise ho-hum.

New York Observer Sara Vilkomerson

It’s when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

They’re now the first major all-girl punk band to inspire a bleary, excessive, and altogether mediocre big-screen biography.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A movie that tells -- or rather, circles -- the story of the band’s formation and abortive career.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The Runaways ultimately feels too lethargic and conventional for the wild story it tells.