In her second effort as an executive producer, Charlize Theron has offered up "Sleepwalking," an inert, sloppily written melodrama as grim and featureless as its frozen Midwestern setting. (Too bad the first film she produced -- an affecting, absorbing documentary about young Cuban musicians called "East of Havana" -- never saw the light of day.)

In "Sleepwalking," Theron plays an addled, self-centered mother who, after a run-in with the police when her pot-dealing boyfriend is arrested, suddenly leaves her 11-year-old daughter (AnnaSophia Robb) in the care of her brother, James. Played by Nick Stahl with blank lack of affect, James leads a marginal, somewhat sketchy existence that leads the bureaucrats to question whether he's an appropriate guardian.

There's no escaping it: Theron is a force of nature, illuminating every scene she's in with commanding ferocity. But when she's not on screen, "Sleepwalking" begins to act like its own title. With escalating degrees of overstatement and hyperbole, culminating in an over-the-top performance by Dennis Hopper as a grotesquely monstrous figure, "Sleepwalking" is the kind of movie that actually uses the line "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" without a trace of irony. Wake me when it's over.

-- Ann Hornaday (March 14, 2008)

Contains profanity and violence.