Premiering at Tribeca, Dana Flor’s ode to the folk-rock singer focuses more on her current career predicaments than her popular appeal.

You know you’re wasting time on a documentary when you feel the urge to Wikipedia its subject while you’re in the middle of watching an entire feature film devoted to them. And once I had finished Dana Flor’s tedious music biodoc 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, I oddly felt like I knew even less about folk-rock legend Ani DiFranco than I did going into it. At a mere 80 minutes, the film should at least come across as tight and succinct (and chock full of information). Instead, the narrative mostly centers DiFranco’s muted pandemic years — were they interesting for anyone? — and offers only a surface-level retelling of her rise to prominence in the 1990s, her innovations as an artist-entrepreneur and her songwriting prowess.

In contrast, aside from joyfully showcasing DiFranco’s ever-changing fashion choices across her prime — from buzz cuts to cerulean dreadlocks to platinum blonde coifs — 1-800-ON-HER-OWN does not exactly allow us to revel in the years that made DiFranco a cult superstar. We barely even learn what drew her to music and songwriting to begin with.

My chief disappointment with the film stems from its incohesive biography. We’re treated to a few vague facts about the subject’s origins in Buffalo, New York, and her relationship with her apparently distant First Wave feminist mother. Yet it’s all told in such coded language and generalities that I was never sure what I was supposed to take away from the scant information we do receive about her upbringing and early career. We’re privy to more direct history of the independent record label she cofounded at age 20 in 1990, Righteous Babe Records (which spawned the former real-life phone number of the film’s title), but the film provides negligible incisive commentary on DiFranco’s talent or what makes her socially conscious hard folk music so enticing to fans.

Much of the film is spent with a mature DiFranco just a little bit before and then during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she connects with a Bon Iver songwriting retreat/program to learn how to collaborate with others during the writing process. A fiercely independent artist, she admits that partnership during album development is a weakness she’s eager to master. Narrative time that could be spent further elucidating DiFranco’s early stardom and sui generis gifts is instead squandered on dull scenes of her trying to make this new endeavor successful. It’s a snooze.

She’s mildly shocked when someone from that venture confesses their dynamic isn’t working for either of them, implying that perhaps she’s too comfortable in her individuality to effectively work in partnership to create an album after all. Eventually, though, she releases her 2021 studio record Revolutionary Love to critical acclaim. I’m happy for DiFranco’s accomplishment while acknowledging that the visual document depicting it isn’t exactly one itself.