Celia

****Some spoilers***

I watched a few episodes back when it first came out and decided to watch it on Netflix as my next binge show. First and foremost this a biopic telenovela. As such characters and story lines have been embellished or created for drama and entertainment. If you expected a accurate biopic move along. People were upset about the additional characters and story lines taking center stage must understand what medium this show is produced for telenovelas are shown long runs and the main story is sprinkled in to milk the episode#.

That said the production value is superb almost movie-like. Costumes, set designs and such were very nice, the acting was pretty good and they choose people who resembled the real life Celia and Pedro albeit much more attractive as TV shows do.

The music had the Cuban-flavor despite it not being completely accurate as others noted only 3 songs of hers actually being sung in the show, blame Sony for that they own her music catalogue and charged the studio an arm and a leg for the rights.

Overall its really entertaining, beautiful to look at from costumes, sets and actors overall an easy 10/10 as a telenovela, as a TV drama i would say its a 7-8 out of 10.

My wife Emiliana and I really got into this excellent story through the first 56 episodes, Mui Bueno, BUT then Netflix changed all the main actors.... DELICADO KILLED THE SERIES FOR ME. Porque Seniors, que esta tu problema? You ruined the whole story line for us. All you had to do was to make the actors appear older. At the time of the 1959 Communist takeover of Cuba, Sonora Matancera was touring in Mexico, and members of the band decided to leave Cuba for good even if the Netflix version was not accurate it was close to the truth. Cilia decided that crossing into the United States instead of returning to their homeland was better. I liked the original Pedro Knight, he had a great personality that was likable and he was funny, the replacement actor did well enough but it was never the same.

I was really into this for the first 50+ episodes, as I thought the "young"/"original" versions of the key characters were great actors...and then they replace half of the characters and age them to their mid 40s, all in one episode. To make it more confusing, they keep some random people the same, and the storyline itself only passes about 2 years max...smh. And then you're stuck trying to decide whether to sit through the next 30 episodes because you just watched 50 of them...and be annoyed the whole time by the character change. Whyyy does this always happen in telenovelas? Am I missing something? Are makeup artists not in the budget??

PLEASE read the opening credits so that you will know this is NOT an actual biography of Celia Cruz? Even with this being said I am really enjoying the series, and it is getting more interesting as it moves along. Jeimy Osorio is doing a good job and I think Celia would be proud of her, the other cast members performances are extremely moving as well (Modesto Lacen as Pedro Knight, Carolina Gaitan as Lola Calvo,Brenda Hanst as Ana, Indhira Serrano as Mirelys, Luciano D'Alessandro as Alberto Blanco just to name a few). Even though it's NOT Celia's biography, the performances are good (some outstanding), but it would have been a little bit better to get Celia's still living husband's take on some of what's being presented (if he didn't have any that is). Feel sorry about her Mom and didn't know she (Celia) died without ever being able to go back to Cuba (according to Wikipedia). She really was one talented lady. Can't wait to see how this ends.

I am a big fan of Celia Cruz. I loved her. She was a unique world-class talent. I don't know where to start in listing the worst aspects of the telemundo series. But It may be helpful to start out by saying that, despite the fact, that they cast an excellent singer in the role, she rarely sang. I scanned through the ridiculous story line to find moments where she was actually singing. Not surprising they got the racial aspects all wrong for Cuba at the time. Celia was a black singer, singing an African based musical form they could've done so much to educate the audience about its origins and history. Despite the fact that Cuba has many people of mixed race at that time black people knew who they were and Sonora Mantancera was predominantly a black group. Almost all of the plot lines were ridiculous.But most egregious was the depiction of Pedro Knight as a horny buffoon. Shame on Telemundo!