Bad Reputation

I'm a huge Joan Jett fan. I love 80's rock and I think that some of her songs that weren't radio hits are underrated and as good as anything that was out on the radio in the 1980's. Joan was and is the ultimate cool feminist, doing her thing and not worrying about her "reputation" so to speak. Lots of great archival, concert, and interview footage in this. Fans of Joan Jett, fans of music, or fans of the 80's will love this.

I was able to see this one last night, and I was just as impressed as I was with "The Runaways" eight years ago. I've actually been a fan of Ms. Jett since her tenure with The Runaways, and still think she's the greatest. This documentary is worth seeing, and just may get Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.

I think this could have been an interesting story had it been made in 2015 or earlier. Joan Jett is an interesting person but her story was more or less rushed through. I didn't know much about her or her bands and I was confused about who was in the bands and how they formed because the pace was so fast.. I guess it was rushed through so you can get to the last third of the documentary containing the highly unoriginal one sided social justice messages that are being rammed down our throats by the left that feel very tacked on and over-emphasized. It almost felt like it was part of a checklist. As if the extreme left are the only ones who care or have perspective, insight or ideas around the world's problems. Bad Reputation is just all around not that inspiring and feels very mainstream and icky. The reviews on imdb like the reviews on amazon have been co-opted into giving unnecessesarily high ratings to things that don't deserve them. This is one of them.

It's a documentary about female rock pioneer Joan Jett. It follows her from her teen years in L.A. and forming The Runaways with Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, and producer Kim Fowley. After the band's collapse, she falls into despair until she connects with bubble-gum music writer/producer Kenny Laguna. She starts up Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and forced to start a label of their own.

In general, I know about The Runaways and The Blackhearts but I don't know about Laguna. It's a solid biopic of the highs and the lows of her career. It goes through the generalities of The Runaways. Her drug use could be expanded on. I would have liked to know where she was when she heard about the deaths of her friends Sid and Nancy. Does she have any words of wisdom about them? As for the rest, her relationship with Laguna is the most interesting. It doesn't skip over their lulls in the 90's. There are also famous fans doing their thing. The two main non-connected ones are Billie Joe Armstrong and Miley Cyrus. While I appreciated Armstrong, I can do without Cyrus. No matter how hard she tries, Cyrus can never be punk. If it's young female Hollywood, they could have used more Kristen Stewart. At least, she has more professional connection to Joan Jett. One gets a good sense of her in this doc and that's always the main goal.

Six stars is because I will like anything that even remotely involves Joan Jett. Having said that, there is little substance to this documentary, and testimonials from the likes of Miley Cyrus and the Green Day punk pretender seem like filler to attempt to be relevant with younger fans, and already seem dated. The virtue signaling in the last half hour or so was boring. There is so much more to Joan Jett, and hopefully there will be a great Joan Jett documentary out there somewhere, but this ain't it...