Review: The Runaways (15)***

Kristen Stewart as hard-boiled rock chick Joan Jett? That's just one of the troubling aspects of this biopic of The Runaways, the all-girl band of teenagers in the 70s when girls didn't play electric guitars.

Casting is key to the believability of this saga of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but even Michael Shannon's star turn as RnR grotesque Kim Fowley – the wacked-out Svengali who both moulds the girls and rips them off in grand fashion – can't stave off a feeling of disappointment.

As a phenomenon The Runaways were unique for their time. The film attempts to portray them as wild chicks with emancipation and adventure on their minds. Don't be fooled. The sex is undercooked and the teasing sequences of Joan and 15-year-old bandmate Cherie Currie, aka Cherry Bomb (played by Dakota Fanning) are a cop-out.

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What the film manages to achieve is a plausible representation of a quintet of kids who are exploited and elevated to cult status in what was – and remains – a man's world. They're soon inured to the vagaries of the business, to the eccentricities of their manager and to the attentions of obsessive Japanese fans.

What none of them can anticipate is the fall-out – from friends, family, followers and from each other when the initial period of electricity and excitement begins to pall.

Based on Currie's memoir Neon Angel and executive produced by Jett, The Runaways never had a chance of being a hard-hitting portrait. Instead it teeters on the verge of delivering punchy glam rock shenanigans but always seems to pull away at key moments.

Fanning is, however, a revelation as the reluctant singer who becomes the band's strutting, basque-clad totem. And Shannon is twitchily superb.

One thing writer/director Floria Sigismondi does nail is the in-your-face aggression of the girls' music. As a trademark Cherry Bomb is still as visceral as it gets.