The Worst Film Ever

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Melanie Daniel (Glynnis O'Connor) is poor, naive, illiterate and mother to 6 year old son Tyler in rural Jasper, Arkansas. Her husband Carl (Don Johnson) returns after two years away in the Army. She wakes up and Carl is gone with Tyler. He leaves her a note which she can't read. He's taken Tyler to California. She rides the bus to find old friend Ronda who has settled in L.A. Ronda is staying at a luxury house in the Hollywood hills with musician Rick (Burton Cummings). Walter (Paul Sorvino) is Rick's lawyer.The movie is uneven. Sometimes it is slower than molasses. Then there are moments of emotional intensity. Her bus friend discovering her illiteracy is a wonderful scene. I wish that gal could stay in the movie. Some of it seems to be shot on the real streets and has that immediacy. O'Connor does a very nice performance and holds the screen. Cummings is surprisingly good as an actor. He's doing more than simply singing here. The movie is generally shot poorly but O'Connor is fascinating enough to keep watching. The story doesn't get the flow that well. It's a lot of starting and stopping.

My husband surprised me recently with the DVD - I had seen a mention of the movie when Burton Cummings had come to town to do a concert but unfortunately it was sold out anyway... I issued a challenge to my hubby to find the DVD and within an hour he had located and ordered it! Don Johnson does a great job as the hard-ass redneck husband who's fed up with his illiterate wife, Glynnis O'Connor, who plays a very strong and determined woman with just the right amount of vulnerability to make Paul Sorvino and Burton Cummings's characters want to protect her and fall in love with her.Burton's acting was spot on, he's so charming and entertaining and his performance was effortless and natural. His singing is an especially great treat but I must confess that I did have to pause, rewind and re-watch that one particular scene a few times over. Thank goodness the sheet music was big enough!

The movie storyline was original and the music, thank-you Burton Cummings of The Guess Who, was great! He really surprised me as both a comedic and dramatic actor. The rest of the cast for this low budget film endevor came off as quite good. A sleeper movie during the early 80's, it did quite well on cable. Hard to find on tape or DVD but shouldn't be too hard to find on e-bay. There were many toe-tapping moments during the film, but what really came as a shocker and quite a pleasant surprise was the fact that Miss O'Connor exposed her bare breast for the first time in front of the camera. NICE! This occurred within the first 15-20 minutes of the opening before she left home to move to California with a friend.

"Melanie" is a very sweet love story about a small town girl finding love with a big city guy. The music in the movie as sung by Burton Cummings adds just the right mood to the whole story. It is one of the most enjoyable movies I personally have ever seen.