"Hello, Daddy! Hello, Mom! I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!"
Imagine cute former child star Dakota Fanning as a coke-snorting punk. She's snarling these lyrics, strapping on garter belts and kissing Kristen Stewart.
Taking a cue from Johnny Depp's untethered career, these daring "Twilight" babes push their talents in disarming ways in Floria Sigismondi's debut film, "The Runaways."
And just like Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, the 70s' rebel-rockers they portray, Fanning, 16, and Stewart, 19, draw a defiant line in the sand here with their glittery platform heels. Their message is unmistakable. We're grown-up actresses now. If moviegoers don't like it, screw them.
That attitude, plus a gritty wallop of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, fuels this guitar-thrashing, girl-power ode to The Runaways, the pioneering all-chick band from the 1970s.
Based on Currie's 1989 autobiography, "Neon Angel," Sigismondi's slick, strutting, noise-filled homage to these "jailbait" trailblazers starts off with all engines revved and the music pounding.
The film opens as Currie's first menstrual blood splatters onto the sizzling-hot California pavement. It's a shocking start to this coming of age tale about wild girls on the road.
The Runways bashed music barriers
The year is 1975. Shimmery blue eyeshadow and the David Bowie "shag" are everywhere.
Metalheads on the music scene had just one thing to say about girls playing hardcore guitar: "Chicks can't rock."
But, some ambitions will not be denied -- just as Sigismondi, a former video director for David Bowie, The White Stripes and Marilyn Manson, lets us see.
Out of nowhere comes manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), who aligns with Jett and packages The Runaways into a money-making novelty act.
Fowley is a sleazy Svengali with a Frankenstein stare and gigantic dog collars clamped about his neck. He immediately begins tutoring and verbally abusing his protégés, some of whom were as young as 13 when the band was formed.
He screams, swears and scams the girls, all the while calling it "good mentoring."
One of film's best moments comes when Fowley hires "hecklers" to toss garbage at his stars during rehearsals. He eggs the girls to fight back at the rowdy onlookers.
"Rock is a man's world," Fowley shouts. "F--- authority. Give me an orgas-m-m-m-m!"
Fowley's bizarre boot camp pays off, particularly when the Runaways play their first L.A. club.
"One day you'll be opening for us," Jett tells two beefy male rockers who taunt her mercilessly.
"The only thing you'll be opening is your legs," these meatheads reply.
Jett laughs off the insult and gets revenge later by peeing on one of the men's guitars.
Girls, guitars and life on the road gone wild
With her choppy black shag, shades and titanic confidence, Stewart layers style and subversion all over tomboy Jett.
All that pent-up darkness she showed with "Twilight's" Bella finally works for Stewart. As Jett she prowls the clubs to find a lead singer, teaches a band mate how to masturbate with a showerhead and eventually gets Currie (Fanning) into bed.
Fanning's performance is equally strong.
Oozing Bowie-meets-Bardot allure, Fanning slides into Currie's trademark fishnets and bustiers with surprising ease.
She sleeps with Jett. She pops pills and fools around with the band's male roadie. Fanning's porn-star appeal zooms us into the big picture here about life on the road for these unsupervised children.
Caught up in the swell of stardom, The Runaways are at once buoyed by fame and brought down by it. What is left is a far cry from the pampered life of a Miley Cyrus.
Stewart and Fanning may not deliver the rock of ages here. And, unlike those "Cherry Bomb" lyrics, Sigismondi's film fails to "have ya, grab ya, til your sore."
Yet these girls grabbed for a dream. Whether The Runaways failed or Sigismondi's tribute falls short at times does not matter. That they tried is everything.
Three stars out of four.
