If you go into a viewing of The Runaways without much familiarity with the band of the same name and/or its most famous member, good luck to you: You’re not going to leave the film with a noticeably increased knowledge base.

The Runaways’ biggest problem certainly isn’t the acting, the cinematography, or the art direction. All of these are fine. In fact, the movie solidly places the viewer within 1970′s America without ever becoming overwhelming or cartoonish about it. (Look for the scene in Dakota Fanning’s kitchen and note the intricacy of her telephone’s yellow, orange, and pea-green flower pattern.)

As for the acting, Michael Shannon turns in another brilliant-manic performance as the ambiguous producer-manager Kim Fowley, and while it’s often unnerving to watch Fanning snort coke and drop four-letter words with abandon, she’s an admirable Cherie Currie. There’s some discomfort in seeing the girl with the Precious Moments figurine-type face as she straddles her microphone and hunkers down into full crotch-baring positions, but it also makes too much sense: After all, Fowley specifically recruited Currie to be the girl whom men were too embarrassed to admit they actually wanted. But then it was okay because they were hardly alone in that desire.

Kristen Stewart occupies Joan Jett’s role by mostly playing her latest incarnation of Kristen Stewart. It’s been said that her acting style is so low-key that one might wonder whether she’s even acting at all. Here, she amps up her typical low-energy routine just a couple notches, and although her husky voice actually fits here, no amount of fierce F-bombs and chairs heaved at recording-studio windows can make enough of a difference.

Or maybe that’s because her character has a tendency to fade into the background. I kept waiting for more on Joan Jett. The first we see of her is a guitar lesson where she’s told that girls don’t play electric guitars, but we have little idea who she is or where she came from. The next we see of her she’s a more-than-competent guitarist who, on a chance meeting with Fowley outside a dance club, determines that she’s going to form an all-girl group. Fast forward a few more scenes and the burgeoning Runaways are rehearsing in a crappy trailer – a brilliant set move, at least – and they’re being told that they’re the next big thing. When – and how – did they learn to wail like that?

And here lies the film’s biggest flaw, the many examples of such uneven pacing. Here’s a timid, barely post-pubescent Currie; her future bandmates look upon her with scorn and express doubt that she will be up to snuff. Here she is five minutes later, churning out a pretty naughty rendition of the eventual “Cherry Bomb”. Here are Jett and Currie, fast friends (and at times possibly more?), drinking behind the Hollywood Hills sign and glossing over the sad details of their childhoods. For the record, Currie’s father is an alcoholic, a storyline with which the film does make some effort to achieve denouement during the latter half of the movie. Here are Jett and Currie snorting coke in an airplane bathroom shortly before they land in Japan. Okay, sure … but when did we see them with anything other than booze? And then, of course, here is the intra-band rift resulting from one member’s sudden over-share of the spotlight.

Some of the major benchmarks are too glossed over to allow the viewer to invest any real interest in Currie’s eventual, inevitable downward spiral. Jett’s story feels particularly unsatisfying: Given that she went on to have the more successful career, perhaps the filmmakers would have done well to focus on her back story.

One of Currie’s last scenes involves a particularly strung-out afternoon in which she wanders aimlessly from liquor store – where her attempt to buy a handle of vodka and two onions is denied – to telephone booth to collapse. In the closing credits, we learn that today Currie is a “chainsaw artist.” (My screening’s audience laughed appreciatively at that one.)

All interesting items, to be sure, but I still wanted more Joan Jett.