El Cantante
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Movie Reviews of El Cantante
Movie Review: Excellent! I loved it!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
In this movie, Jennifer Lopez actually acts. Marc Anthony---that voice---was unreal!!! I'll watch it over and over.Movie Review: Good Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I thought it was a good movie ,i liked seeing Marc and Jen work together, very electricfyng (sp)Movie Review: A Solid Movie
Summary: 4 Stars
I am not a J-Lopez fan, not much of today's salsa fan and I consider Mark Anthony a great salsa singer but only a tepid actor. Having established that, I love '70s salsa (salsa that you could dance AND listen to) and grew up listening to Hector Lavoe. After watching this movie I realized that I had in fact caught -quite by accident- perhaps the last radio interview Lavoe gave before he died in the early `90s. None of the drama here got was even hinted at during that radio interview and the movie explains why.
J-Lopez is by far the most over-rated celebrity ever but in this movie she gives an unimpeachable performance, she's solid. In the first two minutes she draws you in and the movie manages to show her different sides, inconsistencies and develops her into a complex character. Mark Anthony earns his money too; he's funny and introspective. Director Leon Ichaso is hit-and-miss in recreating the characters' torrid relationship but made a beautifully artsy movie; it was good to FINALLY see a director using the palate of Caribbean colors to full effect in film.
There are a few duds in El Cantante though, and they cost it a few stars.
1) The film runs longer than it needs to; after a while it begins to rehash and overkill the points it's trying to make.
2) "Puchi" (Lopez) is supposed to be a feisty yet uneducated girl from the barrio but her dialogue is often above her experience, as if she had years of therapy and has all kinds of insights to share. I loved her part of the script but it is above the experience the character is supposed to have had.
3) The use of fragmented scenes bespeaks of Lavoe's losing sight of reality through drug use, but it is overdone and sometimes without clear purpose. It also runs -inexplicably- throughout the movie, not just after Lavoe's first use of hard drugs.
4) Lavoe sang a lot about social issues (i.e. "Juanito Alimana") but this gets no mention in the movie.
5) Anthony is a great salsa singer in his own right but his sounds NOTHING like Lavoe's nasally/throaty voice. Either sing like him or dub someone who does.
6) One is led to believe that Lavoe's partner, Willie Colon, faded into obscurity after leaving the combo. In fact, Colon hooked-up with Ruben Blades and became even more famous than Lavoe ever was. He then went solo and recorded his own songs. I confess I didn't even know Lavoe and Colon had collaborated so closely originally, since Blades/Colon were THE legendary duo, recording perhaps the most famous salsa classics together. This movie was made not because Lavoe was the most famous salsa singer but because of the tragedies in his life.
7) Salsa does get overplayed in the movie. Yes, it sets the mood but this is supposed to be a drama, not 1/4 music video. A nitpicky aspect is that while the wardrobe is exquisitely adapted to the '70s and '80s, many of the salsa dance moves are blatantly contemporary. This won't be lost on anyone who dances salsa.
I have traveled a lot and from South Africa to London to Moscow to Japan, salsa is danced in ballrooms everywhere. For crying out loud, there was even a salsa combo in the early '90s of Japanese musicians ("La Orquesta de la Luz") who sang salsa in Spanish! This movie is about how that revolution started and how one of its most prominent singers became a victim of his own success.
A very solid 3 1/2 stars, finally an American-Latin movie with nuance (not many of those) but with a little way to go still. May there be more.
Saludos!
Movie Review: Yo soy el Cantante porque lo mío es cantar
Summary: 4 Stars
As a fan of Hector Lavoe, Willie Colon, Rueben Blades and Fania All Stars, I was interested in seeing this movie. The story is framed as an interview with Hector's widow, Puchi, and the story is told from her point of view. The interview scenes are filmed in black and white, but when we flash back to scenes of Hector's life the film is in vibrant color. The movie treats us to a lot of beautiful color, motion and music. It certainly has plenty of eye and ear candy.
Jennifer Lopez gives a fine performance as she moves from a fun loving young girl to a mature woman who lives a life filled with drugs, disappointments and tragedy. Lopez has a lot to work with here as more dramatic time is devoted to Puchi than to Hector.
Marc Anthony does well with the role which concentrates more on the singing than the drama. As expected, he does a marvelous job interpreting Lavoe's music, using the original Willie Colon arrangements. Although Marc Anthony looks about 30 pounds lighter than Hector Lavoe was, there are moments when Anthony's resemblance to Lavoe is downright eerie! It also surprised me how well Anthony manages to physically portray the age ranges as he transitions from a 16 year old kid singing with his dad in Puerto Rico, to an endearing young guy with big talent and a corny sense of humor, and finally to a man in his late 40's ravaged by booze, drugs, AIDS, and personal tragedies.
There is a very nice cameo by Victor Manuelle playing the young Rueben Blades performing an acoustic version of the song, "El Cantante." Blades wrote the song as a tribute to Hector and presents it to him as a gift.
Although I was familiar with Hector Lavoe's music, I didn't know anything about his personal life. I wish that the story was told a bit differently with more emphasis on other aspects of his life, and the emergence of the salsa genre. Instead, it becomes the story of yet another entertainer who is destroyed by alcohol and drugs - a story that was already old when the first version of "A Star is Born" was filmed in 1937. Even with the drug use, I thought Hector Lavoe's life could have provided material for a more meaningful story than this.
There are nice extras on the DVD including two full length feature commentary tracks - one with director, Leon Ichaso - and one with the writers, David Darmstaeder and Todd Antony Bello. There is one deleted scene, "just say no to drugs." A feature called "the sound and the heat of 'El Cantante' " - kind of a "making of...". The feature package is rounded out with the theatrical trailer and sneak peeks of other films.
The music and visuals are beautiful. I wish they had chosen to concentrate on more positive aspects of Lavoe's life. Recommended with reservations.
Movie Review: A Good Movie That Was Virtually Ignored!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me start off by stating that I thought this was a very good biopic about the legendary Hector Lavoe.
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony both did an excellent
job in their portrayals of Lavoe and the fiery Puchi
and the way it was shot, the music, etc. was very good too.
I wish they could've been more detailed about the deaths
of Hector himself of AIDS in 1993, Hector and Puchi's son,
young Hector Jr., who was killed in a gun accident in 1987,
as well as Puchi's own tragic death in 2002.
That's my only sore spot.
The real problem lies in whomever they chose to distribute
and promote this film! When it came out it was in very limited
release and virtually non-exsistent in secondary market theatres!--
-Where I live (Orlando, FL), where there is a very
large latino community
(many of which are northern transplants
of Puerto Rican, Dominican & Cuban descent!)
there was abosolutely nowhere you
could go see this movie on it's opening weekend!
The only way that I got to see it was through a bootleg,
but this movie, if handled right, could have done much better!
Even now, though it's being released to DVD on Tuesday
October 30th, you haven't seen or heard any advertisements
on TV about it's release!--WTF??--Anywayz, I hope that it gets
the love that it deserves from the DVD buying/renting public,
because it's a great story and well done I might add!
I hope a film on the early days of salsa comes out
about Tito Puente / Celia Cruz / Mongo Santamaria/ La Lupe, etc.
that captures that time in the early 50's in NYC when all
of this music was being created. A biopic about any one of
those figures needs to be done. These stories need to be
told and passed on to younger generations and people
who may like salsa music, but never knew where it came from!
This DVD Is Worth Buying!