El Cantante: Review By MutantFairy

This movie has a VERY small target audience. It's made for people who are already familiar with Hector Lavoe. It's based on interviews that his wife gave but it doesn't tell you from the beginning why he was important enough to have a movie made about his life or more importantly, why you should care about him. Instead you only learn near the end of the movie that Hector Lavoe had many gold records & was a Grammy nominated performer.

The movie doesn't build toward anything & doesn't seem to have a point other than "drugs are bad." It tries to show the inspiration for his songs by showing the lyrics onscreen after some tumultuous events in his life. But it isn't done well, the lyrics move across the screen making them difficult to read & it is inconsistent. We see this great singer ruin his life through drugs but it's hard to care about him because we barely get to know him when he isn't abusing drugs. Because we don't really see him before he started using drugs, the movie makes Hector Lavoe out to be a drug addict first and a singer second.

Marc Anthony & Jennifer Lopez were great. It's too bad the movie wasn't better because they should have received more recognition for their performances in this movie. If you are a fan of his fantastic songs you might be interested.