Yuku free message boards

EL CANTANTE
Rated:R

For movie details, please click here.

Known as "La Voz" (the voice), Hector Lavoe was for a time in the 1960s and '70s the biggest star in the Latin music firmament. A passionate singer whose collaborations with bandleader Willie Colon were both musically innovative and highly danceable, Lavoe was also a tortured drug addict who eventually died of complications from AIDS.

Unfortunately, the film made about this charismatic performer's life is further proof, as if any were needed, that watching self-destructive personalities self-destruct is tedious and anti-cinematic. Although it's obvious that real-life husband-and-wife team Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez (playing Lavoe and his wife Puchi) are passionate about the project, and really throw themselves into their performances, El Cantante plays like two wildly different films: one a melodrama filled with endless screaming matches between husband and wife, the other a concert film in which Anthony channels Lavoe to brilliant, hip-swaying effect.

The problem here is not just that Leon Ichaso's direction is flashy but empty, or that the screenplay is clichéd and paint-by-numbers (country boy comes to the big city, gets in with the wrong crowd and starts a long, downward spiral). El Cantante purports to be, on a certain level, a film about Puerto Rican nationalism and how the music of Lavoe, Colon and others raised the profile of a people and became an important element in their diaspora. But the way this is told is so wafer-thin, so lacking in specifics, it will ultimately resonate only for salsa fanatics or members of the Latino community. Anglo viewers new to the material will remain unenlightened.

Yet there is one big plus side to El Cantante, and that is the singing of Marc Anthony. Slim and not particularly good-looking, Anthony boasts a fabulously rich voice and a stage presence that gives new meaning to the term "sex appeal." When he's doing what he does best, backed by a hot band that includes original members of the Fania All-Stars and Lavoe's own orchestra, the film soars into the heavens. Then it reverts back to another scene of domestic strife, and falls thuddingly back to earth.

El Cantante

1 out of 5 stars

Reviewed by Josh Tyler : 2007-07-27 (Cinemablend.com)
If JLo's career went catatonic after Gigli, then after El Cantante I think it's probably safe to go ahead and pull the plug on it. There's no coming out of this coma. El Cantante is the worst movie I've seen since the last Jennifer Lopez teams up with her man movie, and if someone manages to make a worse film this year that'll be quite an accomplishment.

The movie pretends to be the story of famed Salsa singer Hector Lavoe, as told from the perspective of his longtime wife Puchi. Even though putting spouses together in movies almost always results in cinematic disaster, El Cantante does it anyway by casting real life husband and wife Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez as Hector and Puchi. I say the movie pretends to be told from the perspective of Puchi, because it only seems to stick to this premise when convenient. The movie pauses frequently to let Lopez as Puchi, in some sort of bizarre, mock interview introduce each scene. This gives Lopez a chance to showcase her complete lack of acting talent. The movie's awful mock interviews with her play out like someone's final exam in acting class, and JLo looks like she's practicing to play the character in front of a mirror. Lopez actually seems to become a worse actress with each picture, and her work in El Cantante represents a new low. But the really annoying thing about all the screen time she's given to smoke and stare at the camera is that it's all for nothing since once the scene she's introducing starts rolling the camera follows Hector everywhere, with or without Puchi. There's no real attempt to tell the story from her perspective, because that sort of complexity is light-years beyond this script's grasp.

If there were a bright spot in the film, it might have been Marc Anthony as Hector Lavoe. He certainly looks convincing, drugging and whoring, and shrugging his way through the picture. Unfortunately El Cantante never lets us get to know his character. The movie skips through his life with no real rhyme or reason. It's like watching the Hector Lavoe story on fast forward, were the remote control being held by a blindfolded mental patient who randomly switches to slow motion based upon a random bubbling sensation in his bowels. There's no point to any of it, and the movie skips through Hector's life without letting us know who he is or why he's important.

The film can't even properly present his music, the man never sings an entire song and if there was any sort of process to coming up with his sound it's ignored. Lavoe simply shows up in New York and goes to work singing. Well we presume he's singing. We don't see much of it really, though people keep talking about how great he is and soon for no particular reason and with almost no effort on his part, he's instantly elevated to the status of Latin god.

The same is true of his relationship with Puchi, who just sort of shows up, and then they're together. We don't know why they're together, there's no attempt to figure out why Puchi sticks with him, or even to figure out what they have in common besides a mutual affection for heavy drugs. Though maybe it's for the best. If JLo can't handle the meager morsels El Cantante's lousy script gives her, I shudder to think what she might have done to good material. The musician biopic craze dies right here; bury it to the left of Jennifer Lopez's once significant career.

El Cantante (2007)
movie review by Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com | July 24, 2007

Rating: FRESH

I loved it. It has great acting, direction, story, and music. The sexual chemistry of the stars was palpable. Lopez and Anthony are sensational.

El Cantante
By
Victoria Alexander
FilmsInReview.com

I loved it. It has great acting, direction, story, and music. The sexual chemistry of the stars was palpable. Lopez and Anthony are sensational.

My weekly column, "The Devil's Hammer," appears every Monday on www.FromTheBalcony.com. The Devil's Hammer on FTB

Marc Anthony is very short, maybe 125 lbs tops, and has been nicknamed "Skeletor" on gossip websites. Yet on the screen he is mesmerizing. You can't stop looking at him. He's got it and the camera shows it.

I know exactly what it is and, if I wanted to tell you what it was, I could. As weird as it sounds, Marc Anthony has a sexual electricity that comes across. He does a terrific job as the likeable, drugged-out Hector Lavoe. And he is a terrific singer and performer, so his stage performances as Lavoe are exciting to watch.

The film opens with a personal-war-ravaged Puchi (Jennifer Lopez) being interviewed about her famous dead husband, The King of Salsa, Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony). Puchi is a tough lady and lays out the warts-and-all-story of her 20 years with Lavoe. And what a story it is.

Flashing back to the beginning in 1963 in Puerto Rico and against his father's advice, Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony) leaves Puerto Rico for New York City. Singing in Latin dive bars in the Bronx, Lavoe is discovered by a budding music company and the Salsa phenomenon is born. Lavoe meets Puchi and they begin a torturous, complicated relationship. Lavoe reaches international superstardom but along the way becomes a willing victim to the vices of, among many things, other women and drugs.

Someone once said about heroin: "If God created something better, He kept it for Himself."

Real life husband-and-wife acting teams rarely work on screen and most people were astonished when Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony announced they would co-star together. With Leon Ichaso directing (as well as having written the screenplay with David Darmstaeder) and Lopez foregoing the glamorous, saintly wifely role for one of honesty, depth and grit, she delivers a terrific performance layered with many dimensions.

Puchi is not June Carter. She fights hard and is nobody's fool. She is a richly drawn character. Lopez is sensational. She has returned to acting.

Puchi accepts Hector's drug use. She knows the lifestyle well. She knows exactly where he is shooting up and pulls him out of drug dens, cleans him up, gives him some cocaine, and gets him on stage.

Other women come along, but after 2 years and a son, Puchi, in her wedding gown and with the priest in tow, pulls Hector out of a drug and sex party to get married. It's a wild scene that shows off Puchi's toughness, a toughness that allows their relationship to survive.

As Hector's stardom grows, his frequent absences affect his marriage and relationship with their son Tito. They fight bitterly but Hector is also a very jealous man. Drugs eventually start to take control of Hector and he begins missing gigs. The downward spiral begins.

Puchi gets fed-up but they are addicted to each other and the music. The music is wonderful and is richly presented.

Then tragedy strikes, Hector gets sent to a psychiatric hospital, a suicide attempt, and finally, Hector is diagnosed with AIDS.

As producer, Jennifer Lopez chose the perfect director to bring Hector Lavoe's life and music to the screen. Ichaso presents the music as a celebration of sexuality and love of life. All the scenes are vivid and filled with an emotional charge. He has fashioned performances from Lopez and Anthony that are psychologically vibrant. This is more than a musical about the birth of Salsa, it is a stark look at a marriage destroyed by fame and drugs.

Victoria Alexander lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and answers every email. You can contact Victoria directly at masauu@aol.com or by visiting www.FilmsInReview.com