Prey for Rock & Roll

After 20 years of slithering from one nasty club to the next, Jacki, the lead singer of an all-female, predominantly lesbian, late-'80s Los Angeles punk band, has begun to wonder whether she's been wasting her time.

All she has are her insipid lyrics and this movie's bargain-bin epiphanies. So the answer is yes — 1,000 times yes. Wait tables. Wash cars. Anything else.

Welcome to "Prey for Rock & Roll," a rock drama that's hung over with inauthenticity: The fake tattoos come by the armload, and there's even a character named Animal. Most episodes of "Josie and the Pussycats" seem more alive.

The casting alone should warn you about what kind of bottom this movie's going to hit. On vocals and guitar: Gina Gershon (Jacki). Also on guitar: Lori Petty (Faith). On bass: Drea de Matteo (Tracy). And finally, on drums: newcomer Shelly Cole (Sally, Faith's girlfriend).

The film takes us into the lives of the band members, showing us what one-dimensional women they are. Jacki is on the verge of 40, and she's ready to collapse into the arms of a record deal. And Tracy likes to get drunk and high with her boyfriend, Nick (Ivan Martin), who proves to be a whopping migraine of an enabler.

It's not long after we've met the scuzzy Nick and have acquainted ourselves with Sally's improbably unsexed ex-con brother — the aforementioned Animal (Marc Blucas) — that we know the movie has been leading us on. It's not rock 'n' roll for which these women are prey, it's men — and here they come in two types: rapist and potential rapist.

We go into "Prey for Rock & Roll" hoping that it's the flick that escapes the platitudes and self-aggrandizement that typify one music-biz flick after the next, from "Light of Day" to "Glitter."

Since "Prey for Rock & Roll" refuses to be thoughtful, original or exuberant, it demands great performance to transcend the clich�s — or at least set them on fire. But the cast is content to let the poses and body art do all the work. For all their rage and suffering, the ladies fail to produce a single song of according fury.

"Prey for Rock & Roll" is rated R for frequent use of strong profanity and crude sexual slang terms, simulated sex (gay and straight), simulated drug use (cocaine) and violence (including violence against women and some sexual violence). Running time: 104 minutes.