The indie road movie “Janie Jones” is billed as “inspired by the true story” of its writer-director, David M. Rosenthal. Impossible. No one’s life is this boring.
Alessandro Nivola plays an arrogant, drunken, ill-tempered singer of a mediocre, semi-successful rock band who, before a gig, finds out he has a 13-year-old daughter by a junkie (Elisabeth Shue) he doesn’t even remember. The mom dumps the teen and disappears, leaving the rocker to bring the girl along on tour with him. The daughter (Abigail Breslin) makes sad eyes at her dad, strums an acoustic guitar and all but screams, “Please love me.”
The two principals spend most of the movie performing forgettable songs, and the inevitable bonding and redemption scenes contain all the excitement of an evening spent deleting spam. Even at the end, the rocker is still so charmless that the only way the movie could possibly inspire a rooting interest on the part of the audience would be if the daughter removed the smug look from her dad’s face by force, preferably with a chain saw.