King of Salsa

Jennifer Lopez can act, Gigli notwithstanding. In El Cantante she narrates the life of 70's Salsa songster Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony) with some sparks of creative energy. After all, as Puchi, she smoke, drank, and took drugs with him on his way to stardom, inevitable obscurity, and early death. Enabler? Maybe. Witness the Ray Charles, Kurt Cobain arc and you'll know how Hector's life sank so low (no homonym pun intended).

El Cantante is a disappointment because the celebrity couple Lopez and Anthony could have had Oscar flyovers with better script and direction. Many of the scenes are stock musical biopic: low-angle shots of the star strumming and singing, cut to drugs, cut to wife, back to another performance moment, cut to a Fania album cover, all with MTV swift editing and few scenes of depth that are not clichés of the first order.

Clint Eastwood's life of Charlie Bird Parker is a classic of character development; the recent La Vein Rose about chanteuse Edith Piaf depicts the artist sufferer in a mixed bag of time but a straightforward rendition of talent. Cantante shows a druggie who might have been an icon but for his weaknesses. If I have to sit through drug and alcohol addled performers once more, I need better story, regardless of how accurate the film is.

I don't want a documentary—I want an interpretation. Cantante is just a musical like any other, no more.

I couldn't wait to see this movie, however, it was a little disappointing because of the jumpy and sloppy editing. Marc Anthony was great as Hector Lavoe, and Jennifer Lopez was equally as good as Puchi. I went to almost all the venues that Hector played in, including the Palladium, which was the place to go. I saw them all, from Tito Rodriguez, Pacheco, Kako and Tito Puente, etc. However, Hector had this easy style of singing and held you until he was finished. One point I would like to make, Marc Anthony at the present time is the king of Salsa. He can fill a stadium like no other. Hector Lavoe unfortunately was too involved in drugs from the onset...this was part of the musician's scene at the time. Drugs were prevalent, and he made it a part of his life. Anyone who was raised in New York, the City and the Bronx understands that the drugs consumed most musicians. Hector could have been the biggest personality ever, but he blew that gig, sorry to say. I liked the movie, but was not crazy about it. As another writer noted, the character could have been developed a bit more then it was. It was worth the price of admission just to hear all the great music.

Sure, this movie is not perfect. But the fact that it is a snap shot of the glorious high point of SALSA, makes it something special. The story is sad and clichéd, but the excitement of seeing Mark Anthony on the screen is real. Jennifer adds pathos, and really does quite well as the framer of the plot. But the movie wouldn't have been made with Mark Anthony as the center of the film. Then it would have been a concert movie, not a dramatic work. He is a stunning and unbelievable musical talent, and the form of the film is a classic one, where a great singer gets to make a movie. If you compare it to all the other films where this was done (think Elvis), this film far surpasses all of them. But the whole point of the movie is Mr. Anthony's dream,,,to show how a wonderful moment in musical history unfolded and sadly came to an end. This is a story beyond the life of Hector, and one that is classic in illustrating the rise and fall of popular music and culture. The great artists in our pop culture only have a short life before they are destroyed by a society and media that eats its young. If you love music, Latin culture, and reliving the 70's and 80's, this is a movie you will not soon forget. Viva!

This is a biopic of salsa singer Héctor Lavoe (Marc Anthony) who lived from 1946 to 1993. His wife Puchi (Jennifer Lopez) recalls their lives together in 2002. Héctor arrives in NYC from Ponce, Puerto Rico in the early 60s. He quickly gets some success. He meets Puchi who comes from a family of drug dealers. He slowly falls into the world of drugs as his live falls apart.

Marc Anthony's performance comes alive whenever he's singing. He's only competent as an actor but at times, he's overwhelmed by the bigger personality of JLo. There isn't anything original in this biopic story. What's truly lacking is a good cinematic style. This is shot with a style more fitting to a good TV movie. It has way too many montages and the style lacks intensity. The music is great but this can't be just a concert movie.

In 1963, Hector Perez was already a promising young singer in his native Puerto Rico when, at the age of seventeen, he moved to New York City to try and make a name for himself as a performer there. In no time flat, he was playing in clubs, had signed a lucrative recording contract with the Latin-flavored Fania Records, and had changed his name to the far more exotic-sounding Hector Lavoe. From the mid-1960s to his death from AIDS in 1993, Lavoe was an international sensation who helped to popularize the musical style known as "Salsa." But, as with most artists, he lived a life of self-destructive self-indulgence, marked by serial philandering and hardcore drug abuse. He also had a volatile relationship with "Puchi," the Bronx girl who became his wife and who narrates "El Cantante," the glossy movie about his life.

Despite the novelty of the milieu and an undeniable sincerity on the part of everyone involved in its production, "El Cantante" remains doggedly conventional, lackluster and superficial in its treatment of the kind of material with which we are all too familiar from previous biopics that have chronicled the rise and fall of artists of all categories and stripes. Marc Antony brings a certain ferocity and depth to his portrayal of the struggling celebrity, but real-life wife Jennifer Lopez is all fluttery overacting as the woman who stood by her man through good times and bad (mostly bad). The music is enjoyable, but I'm afraid we've all been down this road so many times before that "El Cantante" fails to stir either our passions or our sympathy for the sadly benighted couple and all that they're going through. You'd be better off buying the albums instead.