"Miss Melody Jones" is a film which has some very divergent reviews so far...at least when it comes to scores by these reviewers. The film has a 10, 9, 3 and my 1. Why are the scores this disparate? Well, if you read the reviews we actually all thought the film was terribly made and the star was simply awful...but a couple gave it high scores because the film is so laughably bad. I can definitely understand this, though I tend to give laughably bad films (like "The Apple" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space") scores of 1....because they are technically godawful. Clearly as you watch "Miss Melody Jones", you'll see it's indeed this bad.
The story is about an aspiring young actress, Melody (Philomena Nowlin), who has absolutely no talent whatsoever....and it's obvious to folks watching the film. She cannot act and has a voice that is sometimes LESS pleasant than Edith Bunker's or Betty Boop's! The funny part is that the exploitation filmmakers who cast this character in her first movie go on and on again and again about how talented she is! This is like folks saying Tommy Wiseau deserved a Best Actor Oscar for "The Room" or how a paint-by-numbers project belongs in the Louvre!
The story is a bit like "A Star is Born"....a young girl with spunk going to Hollywood to make it big. But in the movie versions of this, the women playing Esther Blodgett actually had talent! Here, it just seems inexplicably why anyone would say Melody has any.
Now I want to make one thing clear. Despite hating everything about this film (the direction, the incompetent cinematography and the acting by everyone), I don't want to be cruel about Philomena's acting. She was young and this was only her second of two films to her credit. With LOTS of voice coaching, decent direction and experience, she might have developed into a talented actress. But here, it's obvious she's in way over her head and doesn't have the necessary experience and training to star in a movie. I honestly wish her the best....but given the limitations of the film, even if Bette Davis or Meryl Streep starred in this early in their careers, it would have still sucked...though not THIS badly.
