Joining a band, especially for a teenage girl, is a rebellious act. After all, playing music has historically been a much less socially acceptable choice of after-school activity than joining the pep squad. When I heard that a movie was being made about the legendary '70s teen girl band from Los Angeles the Runaways—based on the memoir Neon Angel by band member Cherie Currie—I was cautiously optimistic that the rebel girl musician would finally be shown in all her glory. I thought teen-girl rockers could have a positive pop cultural moment, especially since most movies about bands show young women as mere groupies
And yet The Runaways, which had a limited release in March and opens widely next week, sticks to the clichéd rise-and-fall formula you would find on any episode of the VH1 show Behind the Music—or in any other movie about women musicians. Like fellow films about girl bands, from Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains to Satisfaction, The Runaways packed in as much sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll—and the side effects of all that hedonism—as it could in 90 minutes. The girl-band genre is heavy on this sort of manufactured drama. To wit: Did the Runaways really get a record deal the morning after two of its members hooked up? This hysteria is unnecessary because, as anyone who has ever been in a band (or at least seen the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster) can tell you, there's plenty of drama inherent to a band's creative process and interpersonal dynamics. The Runaways were rock pioneers. But their movie dwelled on cat fighting rather than telling the story of how they carved a space in rock history.
While girl-band movies portray wildly different types of bands—Spice World is the Spice Girls' Technicolor, girl-power version of A Hard Day's Night; Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is about the dark side of Southern California hippie culture; Satisfaction chronicles the summer of an '80s barroom cover band—they all share key elements of an entertaining but far too predictable tale. From Svengalis to signature looks, what follows is a guide to the tropes of the girl-band movie, and how they differ from their boy-band counterparts.
