Appealing actors can't lift struggling 'Low Down'

Mini-review: 'Low Down'

Jazz musicians struggling with personal demons and drugs have become a subgenre on their own. “Bird,” “Man With the Golden Arm” and “Lady Sings the Blues” lead the list, with Jeff Preiss' moody but dramatically lackluster “Low Down” hovering around the bottom.

Based on the memoirs of Amy-Jo Albany, “Low Down” stars Elle Fanning as Amy-Jo, a young, impressionable girl attempting to connect with her famed jazz musician dad Joe (John Hawkes), a sweet man who wants to be a good parent, but is already an addict mired in a messy milieu of drugs, prostitution and poverty in 1974 New York.

“Low Down” packs a powerhouse cast with Hawkes as an amiable piano player who can't stay straight, Glenn Close in stellar form as Amy-Jo's crusty old “New Yawk” grandma, Lena Headey as Amy-Jo's alcoholic would-be singer mom and Peter Dinklage as an enigmatic neighbor forced to star in porn movies to make a buck.

These excellent performances are undermined by Preiss' leisurely direction (packing all the snap of boiled linguine) and Topper Lilien's screenplay (with the real Amy-Jo) supplying minimal to zero dramatic arcs for these characters.

“Low Down” boasts a wonderful 1970s texture (shot in 16 mm. footage by Christopher Blauvelt) with period props and TV clips, but none of this can overcome the movie's narrative inertia, no doubt the result of its faithfulness in replicating the relative banality of Albany's real life.

“Low Down” opens at the River East 21 in Chicago. Rated R for drug use, language, sexual situations. 119 minutes. ★ ★

• Dann Gire's Reel Life column runs Fridays in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHFilm.