Joan Jett was a trailblazer for women and outsiders in rock n roll and Bad Reputation does a decent job condensing this into a 90 minute raw and intense dive into the highest highs and lowest lows of Joan Jett's illustrious career. While the storytelling is a bit disjointed, it is absolutely a worthwhile watch. I would recommend to any music aficionado.
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mdroel2027 September 2018
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crowemagnon16 April 2021Six 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...
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zachmetzgers14 November 2020Really, she is. I love the song "I Love Rock and Roll" as well as several of her other hits, but I didn't really know that much about Joan Jett. She was before my time, but her story is badass. She was a trailblazing female rocker who was brave, outspoken, and talented. She broke down barriers for women in the music industry and her rock contributions stand the test of time. Fun documentary covering her journey as an artist. Sometimes the movie didn't do a great job of anchoring the events to a timeline, but otherwise, it was well done.
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therese_callahan20021 October 2018I 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.
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MyMovieTVRomance16 December 2021This is my third or fourth time at least, watching this documentary about my best girl, Joan Jett. And in all honesty, I was not impressed by this the first time I saw it, because it felt like a love-letter just for Joan- a film made just to please her rather than her audience- devoid of anything interesting for fans to come away with, instead leaving us only with what we already knew.
Joan tends to think that people who criticized this doc only wanted tabloid-esque details about her wild party days or whatnot. But, this is not the case- not for me, at least. My main issue with this documentary was that it lacked any real intimacy. I went into this hoping to see her hanging out at home, watching TV, cooking in her kitchen (which she loves to do) while talking to the camera... you know, a day in the life kind of thing, so that it felt like the viewer was really hanging out with her, getting to know her. But, on the contrary, this is an extremely formal and professional portrait. And while I respect the formality as a trait of politeness on Joan's part, it is annoying to someone who wanted something a bit more cozy and revealing.
I didn't learn anything new about the lady I love so dearly, and true to character, she stays classically aloof here. But, after having watched it a few times now (because Joan), I've come to appreciate that despite still leaving something to be desired, it is brisk, never boring, shows Joan to be quite likable, humble, and non-pretentious, and gives a very nice overview of her career.
Don't expect to know Joan deeply after this. This documentary is not a gut-spilling revelation like some are. But, for what it is, it's good. And it's Joan, so...
I love you so very much, Joanie Jett! 💌💖 -
SnoopyStyle26 January 2019It'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. -
nogodnomasters12 February 2019This is a documentary of the life of Joan Jett. The good news is she is still alive to tell it. The bad news she is still alive to tell it. The problem with iconic rockers is that they either die young or fry their brains out an do an Ozzie impersonation. Joan Jett seemed fried and her mouth moved oddly as if she had a stroke or used botox.
I loved the first hour of the film showing her life to the '90s. After that, it fell off a cliff except for the Hall of Fame induction. Even though it was a documentary, they could have introduced a little more drama into it. And in spite of what Joan Jett claims, I didn't like Kristen Stewart in that role.
The DVD does give you 4 guitar pics.
Guide: F-word. Nudity. -
lorenzomusic-0053322 June 2019This is one great movie. It should be the prime example in film school of how to structure a music documentary--get all the people involved to talk, keep the music coming, roll the old footage, and when there isn't old footage, show the stills, no matter how grainy or scribbled over with felt-tip pens.
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taylor-gold-135 January 2022Joan Jett is very talented, and this documentary also shows how brave, bold, and original she was early in her career. Those risks that she took are the reason we want to watch a documentary about her today. Great rock documentary!
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mycannonball24 November 2021I'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.
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oldchummer15 March 2019I was expecting this to be rather in-depth look at Joan Jett as opposed to more of a reaction to her from other people. It tends to be a quite redundant documentary, with Joan's peers and fans (often other big name musicians such as Billie Joe Armstrong, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, etc.) talking about how she was groundbreaking just for being a female rocker basically. So here's the thing, I'm sure there were actual sexist people who really didn't like what she was doing, my issue with this tends to be I think this tends to be a bit exagerrated at times. For example, they go on about how she talked about sex in her music and how this was taboo or socially unacceptable just because of her gender, by comparing it to Mick Jagger being sexually suggestive. I'm sorry, but yes there was blowback to male musicians being overtly sexual, especially in the south, hell parent groups (often headed by mothers) largely tried banning Male centric hard rock and metal music for being graphic, violent and (you guessed it) sexually suggestive. Seriously look up the PMRC. I get the feeling that a lot of the disgust and criticism directed towards Joan comes with the territory as opposed to it be a gender bias. Guys with long hair were often picked on or subjected to homophobic slurs sometimes.
Its more often a diatribe about this kind of stuff for large portions of the documentary as opposed to her musical process or anything much to do with her personal relationship with any of her bandmates. It even glosses this over with the Runaways. It doesn't particularly give much more insight into who she is than what we already know about her. -
This is a perfect example of a great subject ruined by someone who just has no clue how to tell a compelling story. Watch this film and you will know no more about Joan Jett than you did before you watched it. There are times you will be screaming at your monitor: "what does this have to do with Joan Jett?" Tangents, tangents, and more useless tangents. And really, what the hell was Billie Joe Armstrong doing in this film? It was another example of a filmmaker thinking big name interviewees would add to the story. You would have thought filmmakers would have learned by now. The person we want to hear from is the subject. The person we want to hear from is Joan Jett. No one gives a damn what the singer from Green Day thinks of her. The film made me angry. And the filmmaker really should have watched the brilliant documentary, The Punk Singer, about one of his interviewees Kathleen Hanna, to see how a rock doc should be made. So bad, so bad, so freakin' bad. Please don't ever make another film, Kevin Kerslake. You made Joan Jett boring.
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dk77712 April 2021It's really hard to make a boring documentary about a person like Joan Jett, but the director managed to do it here.
In addition to being poorly and confusingly directed, the film quickly becomes tedious in its desire to educate the viewer, rather than providing him with facts about the life and work of Joan Jett, who is a really interesting person and a great musician.
More celebrities appear in the film, who seem to be there just to fill in the gaps and make the film even longer than it seems, even they seem boring.
In short, the film is unfortunately a complete disaster, and the ending is hilarious, there really is no need to waste time on this disaster.
Definitely one of the worst documentaries I have ever watched. -
thomas339119 October 2021I'll never understand why everything has to be so political - even a documentary about a Rock legend. LOVE Joan - love her tenacity - love her music. The director of the film ruined the entire film by including hateful rhetoric about President Trump. WHY? Not needed at all.
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big_kmc15 April 2019I 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.