YMMV / The Runaways

The band:

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Jett wasn't joking with the "Japanese Beatlemania" comparisons. The film shows the band having quite the sizeable Japanese fanbase.
• Narm: "Dead End Justice".
  • The cover◊ for their final album, And Now...The Runaways. It's a campy album showing the girls in dapper suits rather than their casual outfits.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Dead End Justice" also has a rather dark part in the form of Cherie's brutal assault at the hands of the police.
  In the naked city
  Spaces ain't that pretty
  As I was getting dusted
  I happened to get busted
  Oh yes I was arrested
  Oh god how I protested
  They beat me with a board
  It hurt just like a sword
  They kicked me in the eye
  My brain began to fry
  This is like a movie
  I know I'm gonna scream
  All the pain that I feel
  Makes me feel mean
  It's so sad and crazy here
  I think I'm gonna cry
  If I don't wake up from this dream
  I think I'm gonna DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!
• Signature Song: "Cherry Bomb" is the first song that most people think of when they hear the Runaways.

The film:

• Actor Shipping: While they had previously worked together on Twilight, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning's close friendship while promoting this biopic led many fans of it to ship them. The two would often tease each other, with Kristen at one point pranking Dakota on Jimmy Fallon by recording a message asking how it was to kiss her, and when not doing that, the two would praise each other. Dakota also presented Kristen with an award at the Women In Hollywood Awards, to which Kristen said, "Oh my God, dude I love you so much." The pair's continued friendship has made sure that the pairing still has a following years later.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning kiss in the movie, guess what the main thing they're interviewed about is? If it's not that then it's Dakota performing on stage in Cherie's iconic lingerie.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Michael Shannon steals the show with his over-the-top performance as Kim Fowley.
• Fetish Retardant: Some of the sexualized scenes with Cherie slip into this since she is a fifteen-year-old girl being exploited for Fanservice - and Dakota Fanning was the same age during filming.
• Funny Moments: When another band behaves like jerks to Joan and Cherie, Joan gets revenge by pissing on their guitars...then slipping in it and tripping over her own pants when they almost catch her in the act.
• Les Yay: Played between Joan and Cherie. Apparently, it was Truth In Film that they experimented together, but they were never a couple.
• She Really Can Act:
  • Most critics' reactions to Kristen Stewart, especially considering how she did all of her own singing and learned how to play the guitar. Even the lady herself was fooled when listening to a recording of Stewart, thinking she was just listing to one of her old tapes.
  • Not that Dakota Fanning's acting talents were ever in doubt - but she had been doing mostly children's movies and critics called this a step in the right direction to establishing herself as an adult actress.
• Retroactive Recognition: Is that Darkseid as a band member?!
• Squick: The very first shot we get in the movie is a drop of blood hitting the sidewalk. As the camera pans up, we see blood is running down Cherie’s leg, meaning she has her period.^note Depictions of menstruation in film and television are especially upsetting for people who do not experience periods, i.e. men
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some reviewers say they would have preferred to see the film focus more on Joan than Cherie.
• Uncertain Audience: Not the film itself, which was received moderately well by critics. But the studio didn't know whether to market it towards the now aged fans of the band from their heyday - or else the teenage fans of the two leads.

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