El cantante

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.

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.

Salsa. The term was coined in the 1970s by young musicians like Hector Lavoe, Larry Harlow, Ray Baretto, Willie Colon, who wanted a different name for the kind of music they were playing. The term "salsa" was then popularized by Izzy Sanabria, owner of the Latin New York magazine, and Jerry Massuci, owner of Fania Records. There is a huge debate over whether "salsa" originated in Cuba or Puerto Rico. I love Afro-Cuban music, so I tend to favor Cuba, but it really doesn't matter as there are so many styles - Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, LA, New York, Columbian, Mambo.

This film is a tribute to salsa and to Hector Lavoe - The Voice. Marc Anthony does a good job of impersonating Lavoe and giving us a look into his demons - alcohol, drugs, jealous fantasy. Jennifer Lopez plays his wife, Puchi, and we see the trials and tribulations of a marriage that was shaky at best.

Enjoy the music and enjoy JLo. What more do you want?

First of all, this film is not as bad as people are saying it is. Jennifer Lopez is good and Mark Anthony is great. The music alone is worth your money. That, however, is where the praise must end.

Unfortunately, the script seems sloppy. There's no structure to the story, and the film fails for it. Moments that should be important seem to occur too quickly to feel because the screenwriter(s) seems to lack a sense of pace.

This could have been helped by a good director. Unfortunately, again, the director was one of the screenwriters, which of course didn't bode well for his sense of pacing. The film is jarringly disconnected and the characters, even Lavoe himself, are far less developed than they should be.

Had a film like "Ray" never been released, "El Cantante" would have met every expectation of the public. Unfortunately for the filmmakers of "El Cantante", "Ray" provided a structured script that developed the lead as well as the supporters. "El Cantante" seems to half-develop Puchi and Lavoe, and give really no more than minimal screen time to any supporting cast.

Which leads to probably the biggest problem of all. This film is told through the eyes of Puchi, Hector's wife. While this should provide an insight to who Hector was as a person, it's a very slanted account and the average moviegoer can tell that important things have been left out. This isn't like "Ray", where Ray Charles himself was giving the story and therefore could tell things how they were. Puchi (and subsequently the film) only seems to mention the other women in Hector's life in passing, focuses very little on the tours that Hector undoubtedly went on without her, and really doesn't let us into the world of the entertainment business in the 60's and 70's. Some of this, I'm sure, is because Puchi just didn't know about these things. Some of it too, I suspect, is because she didn't want it in the movie.

This problem would have been rectified if the film was about Puchi with Hector as a supporting character, and if consequently Puchi had been developed to her fullest capabilities. That did not happen.

One has to wonder if some of the reason for the lack of character development and pacing is because they caught wind of the other Lavoe film "The Singer" and tried to rush to beat it to the theaters.

In the end, this film is worth the watch. Is it a classic? No. Is it a good time? Absolutely. There may be another, better Lavoe movie released in our lifetimes. Right now, this film is worth it.

The Script gets a "D". The Director gets a "B", if for no other reason than amazing musical scenes. The Actors get an "A".

Therefore, I give the film a solid B+.

I knew very little about Hector Lavoe or his music before seeing this film and I must admit that apart from knowing a few of his songs, I still can't say that I know the man or why he was the way he was. The film almost glorified his tragic lifestyle and choices but gave us no real insight into what motivated the man.

I take the film 'Ray' as an example. We go deep into Ray's childhood to understand why he does what he does, positive and negative, and why he thinks and feels the way he does. We never see Hector as a child, I don't know what happened to his mother and never get a sense of the relationship between him and his father.

Honestly, and sadly, this film doesn't make me see Hector Lavoe the man or the even Hector Lavoe, the musical genius. From the first sequence, this film was about a drug addict who also sang who was named Hector Lavoe.

I think he deserved more than that.

With that said, the music is very well done and there were flashes of brilliance but there was too much quick cutting and jumping away from dramatic moments. It's fine if you wanted the music sequences to be fast paced but even dramatic moments were rushed along and stylized to the point of taking me out of the film.

Good film but poorly directed and not a classic which, like I said, Hector deserved better. He deserved the full 'Ray' treatment of this being a shining testament to his genius and not a movie about Puchi's husband.