Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

MJ Fox may have done his best serious acting here, but jett is better. A strange thing about the 70's runaways group. One chick, the one Dakota played in the biopic of the runaways recently, Cherrie Curie, did a great job acting in the 1980 movie Foxes.....and Joan nails it in 87...go figure....A simple, very depressing, but realistic movie....slice of life stuff. Which, as someone mentioned, is obviously why it flopped at the BO. Very good bar band stuff from Jett here.....Paul Schrader has never made a movie without merit. Keep in mind this is the guy who wrote the script for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, so even his least movies have something to offer. Schrader deals in some very heavy, deep human motivations and inclinations in his flicks, and never made a movie that was light fluff yet. This is the closest to that claim, and even this movie has merit and substance. Prob the worst movie he made, but even this is good....Let's face it, the guy has never made a bad movie...

This film may not be a work of genius, but it touched me deeply in 1987 and it still does. Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox touch a chord literally and figuratively as polar opposite siblings who share a passion for music. Gena Rowlands is absolutely brilliant as the desperately ill mother who clings to her faith for solace and dominates her children out of fear for them. The soundtrack is jam-packed with old-fashioned style rock n' roll. An instrumental piece (titled Elegy) underscores the leaden sadness throughout the film and is ethereal and beautiful. For anyone who has struggled with family strife, there will be familiar territory here. This film is, in my opinion, underrated and worth a second (or a first!) look.

the first time i watched this movie i only watched it because i was big michael j fox fan (then again who wasn't in the mid 80's) and an even bigger joan jett fan. i figured it would just be a fun movie. i had no idea that joan jett would do such a good job in it. my favorite part of the movie was the cameo by trent reznor though. he plays keyboards for one of the bands they are competing with. when this movie came out it was still two year pre pretty hate machine so i didn't notice him after i bought that album i'd heard he was in it and rewatched it and sure enough there he was. so if you're a fan of any of these people this movie is definetly worth watching.

Although the movie may be disappointing, the soundtrack sure is not! It contains unique songs of Joan Jett, like the titletrack or the heavy rocker 'Rabbit's got the gun'. Even Michael J feels like singing a song (but if that was such a great idea...) Anyway, for all that like Joan as a musician the soundtrack is a must-have.