Feel the Noise: Critic Reviews

It's the subtexts -- about minority kinship and Hispanic self-actualization -- that resound. If only its fable (and leading man) didn't keep getting in the way.

Could have used more music.

The plot is contrived, the performances are all over the board, and Chomski's camera ogles his actresses just a little too much.

...a music-fueled drama with far less substance than most CD liner notes.

I didn't feel this noise.

No one will mistake director Alejandro Chomski's Feel the Noise for great drama. But there's an undeniable sweetness to the characters, the performers are highly appealing, and the music sizzles.

A cool blend of Puerto Rican and Nuyorican rhythmic, racial and family ties that bind, Feel The Noise likewise taps into a hot fusion of African derived sounds and sensibilities that connect those multiple cross-continental roots together.

It's hard to fault a screenwriter for cramming every idea he's ever had about anything into his first movie for fear there won't be a second.

Producer Jennifer Lopez's cameo in the film's climactic Puerto Rican Day parade sequence feels like a victory lap for successfully bilking film financiers and moviegoers out of their money.

Dramatic tension and narrative momentum are MIA.

Possibly the least provocative hip-hop movie ever that didn't star Lil' Bow Wow, Feel The Noise is the kind of feel-good/kid-with-a-dream-overcomes-the-odds story we're used to seeing starring white kids named Hilary or Lance.

Reggaeton has officially come of age: The burgeoning subgenre now has a terrible, opportunistic exploitation movie to call its own.

...rambles heedlessly from cliche to cliche...

An awkwardly executed drama with a leading man better suited for the concert stage, not the movie screen.

This simplistic teen drama features an engaging young star but doesn't miss a "follow your dreams" cliche.

Instead of trying to find the heartbeat of reggaeton, the movie resorts to teen conventions, banking that its target audience -- Latino teens, who don't often see themselves onscreen -- won't know enough to demand better.

This music-driven melodrama aims to salute and promote a cultural phenomenon -- reggaeton music, in this case -- by slathering it all over an instantly forgettable, cliche-laden pop flick.

First-time screenwriter Albert Leon appears to have turned for music industry insight not to his famous producer (who has no excuses) but to other music-themed movies (Mariah Carey's Glitter, perhaps?).

How do you say "sappy Horatio Alger tale" in Espanol?