Selena: Critic Reviews

By the end of the film, Selena has been all but canonized.

Selena Quintanilla Perez's life was too short to fill a screen bio with traditional dramatic components, yet Selena infectiously salutes the Tejano singer who had a rapturous fan base when she was slain in 1995.

Selena succeeds, through Lopez's performance, in evoking the magic of a sweet and talented young woman.

Selena surmounts its connect-the-dots approach to its heroine's life to create an appealing, energetic look at a too-briefly soaring musical star.

This is a simple story of hope and triumph, of one girl with the drive to succeed defying the odds and following her dream. It's not an original tale -- movies like this abound -- but Nava's point-of-view is fresh.

Missing is a sense of the interior life behind the smiling face that Selena showed the world. What of the drive that led her to music? What comfort did she find in it? What pain?

A well-meaning but bland and shallow salute to Selena.

What a biography. And what a screenplay.

Even in its sappiest moments, Jennifer Lopez's performance and Selena's music shine through.

In spite of Jennifer Lopez' strong performance, it doesn't save an incomplete story that only covers some of Selena's life.

In her first major, star-making role, Jennifer Lopez is compelling, but the rest of this showbiz biopic is shallow and excessively melodramatic, like most of Gregory Nava's films.

Lopez's commanding presence makes up for any of the script's shortcomings.

Jennifer Lopez is outstanding as Selena, lending ability and grace to the stage numbers, in particular, but throughout the film, in general.

Beautiful movie, Lopez's best work

Not only gives you some insight into a talented young singer, but some insight into Chicano life in the U.S. Most of all, it is a solid love story.

On the whole, the movie bogs down in reverence for Selena and her family; I lost count of the speeches about believing in yourself and making dreams come true.

About a Mexican-American singer who fufilled her calling in life.

Nava, who started his feature-film career with El Norte, is a good director who invariably finds a strong rapport with his actors. He's not much of a writer, though, and he should think twice about creating dialogue for his future projects.

Jennifer Lopez is sensational. She not only looks remarkably like the real star, but she radiates the same incredible energy, warmth, style and magnetism for which the young pop singer was known.