Sleepwalking

When a woman (Charlize Theron) abandons her adolescent daughter (AnnaSophia Robb), the woman’s well-meaning brother (Nick Stahl) can think of nothing to do but return to the abusive father (Dennis Hopper) he and his sister ran away from years ago. Writer Zac Stanford and director William Maher should have come up with a different title; this one is, alas, all too appropriate. (Titles have never been their long suit; their last movie was The Chumscrubber.) Hopper chews the scenery like a seething Simon Legree (no first-time director is going to tell him what to do) while everybody else, including Woody Harrelson as Stahl’s good-ol’-boy co-worker, acts as earnest as all get-out, just like Hollywood hotshots cruising the indie-flick slums—to little effect, in a lifeless movie about uninteresting people.