The Runaways: Worst Film of 2010 So Far

"The Runaways" wins my vote for Worst Film of 2010 so far. First-time screenwriter/ director Floria Sigismundi (yes, that really is her name), who has mostly done music videos, demonstrates an almost complete lack of filmmaking talent. The shallowness of "The Runaways" is almost frightening.

Dakota Fanning is the star, playing Cherie Currie, lead singer of the short-lived and fairly uninteresting mid-1970s rock band The Runaways. Ms. Currie, who is still alive, wrote a memoir, "Neon Angel," upon which the film is based. I haven't read it, but I'm guessing, based on the film, that it's got all the depth you'd expect from a book by the Pussycat Dolls.

Ms. Fanning tries to act, even though she is given almost no dialogue or dramatic situations to work with; not so for Kristen Stewart, who sleepwalks along the margins of the movie, playing Joan Jett, founder of the band.

Sigismundi appeared to be excited by the project because it gave her the opportunity to play with 1970s costumes and hairstyles. Like me, she was a teenager in that epoch. I yield to no one in my appreciation for 70s rock culture, in which I was deeply involved. (I discovered rock in 1976, when at the age of 12 I first heard KISS.) But if all one appreciates is that epoch's clothing and hair, then one doesn't have a clue as to what it was about.

Sigismundi also seems to have been excited about filming girl-on-girl eroticism. I certainly like the idea of doing some long-overdue truth-telling about the extent of bisexuality among rock fans, but Sigismundi takes a shallow approach to that as well. Not once do we see the characters reflecting on what they're experiencing as they explore bisexuality. In fact, that's a good way to summarize Sigismundi's approach to filmmaking: she depicts a world where no one thinks. I presume this is because she herself barely ever thinks. Keep that hairstyle cool and that head empty.