“Go sell Girl Scout cookies,” somebody says in the very brief, somewhat on-the-nose teaser trailer for Floria Sigismondi’s directorial debut “The Runaways,” the biopic about the short lived girl punk band that launched the careers (most famously) of Joan Jett, Micki Steele and Lita Ford. It’s only fifty seconds long, so there isn’t much we can say about it. Dakota Fanning is pretty unrecognizable and her make up seems to be channeling Diane Lane’s Corinne Burns from “Ladies And Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains” (though hopefully “Runaways” is much better than that overrated cult film) and Kristen Stewart seems to have switched gears from moping in “Twilight” to raging here. We kind of dig it.
If we do have one concern, it’s that the look of the film – and, again, we’re judging this on a very brief teaser – is surprisingly flat. Sigismondi has built a career making visually inventive videos for artists like Bjork, Sigur Ros, The White Stripes, Fiona Apple and Marilyn Manson, but the footage here seems very…..ordinary. But that could just be how the trailer is cut.
“The Runaways” will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and is slated to hit theaters on March 19, 2010.