Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

In fact, Lopez deserves praise for pushing this project. The recently deceased Puchi (who helped generate the script and pushed for Lopez to play her) is not the kind of character you see on screen every day.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 5, 2008

Leon Ichaso's film soft-pedals everything save the language in what often resembles a made-for-cable biopic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 5, 2008

There is something entirely dead about Lopez's performance. No matter how superficially lively she makes it, she is always simply mouthing the lines. Never mind Jenny from the block. Jenny is the block. Of wood.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 5, 2008

The film, however, beginning with a flashback to 1963, is a soft-pedalled account of Lavoe's rise to fame and his drug-related downfall that has more in common with the biopic parody Walk Hard than anything as muddy as real life.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 5, 2008

This messy, maudlin portrait of the decline and decline of Puerto Rico-born salsa star Hctor Lavoe wavers uncertainly between cable channel biopic and socially concerned drug movie.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Sep 5, 2008

This may be one of the very few biopics in which the subject is marginalized to the point of irrelevance.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 17, 2007

El Cantante has to legitimize its subject before it can immortalize him; and in the effort, it makes the mistake of letting a star get in the way of the truth.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2007

I would have liked to have seen a more in-depth look at the salsa movement. Still, we do get a lot of great music, and Anthony is a natural onscreen in a tailor-made role.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2007

Marc Anthony plays the smack-addicted singer, who has some dynamite numbers but not much to say for himself.

| Aug 9, 2007

A downer of a musical biopic that leaves no clich unturned.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 6, 2007

You need to give your audience a reason to care, not just assume they will because your subject was important to the history of music.

| Aug 4, 2007

The film's first half is an uneven string of scenes that offer little setup and sometimes confuse.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Lavoe was a gifted and original singer and song interpreter, but this film is unlikely to spread the word.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 3, 2007

The music is the uncontested highlight of El Cantante, which tells the story of the tragic life of salsa legend Hector Lavoe.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

El Cantante never nails the ecstatic moment of musical collaboration we crave from this genre. Where is the scene that gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of salsa's creation?

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

El Cantante has nerve but can't follow through on the edginess of its intentions.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Throughout El Cantante, we're told repeatedly that everybody loves Hector, though why they should love him is a mystery. For fully two-thirds of the film, there isn't enough there either to like or dislike.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Nothing gets explored at length, and some key points are glossed over altogether, namely Hctor's out-of-wedlock son and his frequent womanizing. Such factual details would demoralize Puchi. They are merely mentioned, then ignored.

| Original Score: C | Aug 3, 2007