Movie and Television Reviews

I didn't have high expectations for El Cantante, a movie based on the life of salsa great Hector Lavoe, as I entered the AMC. It had been panned by some critics (including this hatchet job) and starred the multi-untalented Jennifer Lopez (can't act or sing), one of the most obnoxious actresses working today.

The first half of El Cantante confirmed my suspicion. Every scene falls flat as Lavoe progresses too quickly towards his goal and with little hardship. That could have been the way it really happened, but it doesn't make for great drama. Unlike Ray, we don't get an audition scene. He just shows up and starts working. His romance with Puchi (J-Lo) is also too easy. He goes to her party and that's it-they're in love.

Perhaps sensing the lack of conflict, the directors add a rift between Hector and his father and another between Puchi and Hector's sister, and they're interesting in a Hispano-social kind of way. The father-son fissure representing a kind of country-city divide and the Puchi-sister difference the divergent responses of Hispanics to life in America-Hector's sister is solidly middle-class and Puchi's mixed up in the drug/crime Puerto Rican subculture.

Finally, movies with narrators are usually very good, but Jennifer Lopez, doing her best to channel Rosie Perez, grates as does the movie-Spanglish wherein lines are said twice-once in English for the masses and another time in Spanish to preserve some kind of authenticity (Donde vas? Where are you going, honey”)

A good tragic biography (tragbiopic) has two indispensable and related elements. First, the audience needs to feel that the subject is significant in some way and second, the subject's downfall must be accompanied by regret and a sense of loss or waste. Thus, in Amadeus, the audience wonders what glorious music an older Mozart would have produced if not for that damned Saliere and, in The Babe, contemplates the records Ruth would have set save for those infernal ham sandwiches.

It's in this regard, about the time of a funny wedding scene, that El Cantante redeems itself. The movie having successfully established, albeit through the use of some pedestrian montages, that Hector Lavoe matters and that he has the world in his hands, so to speak, transforms itself into a compelling chronicle of Hector Lavoe's downfall and, like all powerful film-making, appeals to the universal, effecting empathy with Lavoe, and prompting self-contemplation.

Suddenly, Jennifer Lopez' narration doesn't feel like being yelled at by DMV employees, and the scenes acquire a sense of urgency. The audience yells (figuratively or literally, depending on the location of the theater) at Hector to “watch-out” as if his life were a highway and drugs and women, obstacles. The “tree” in question is drugs. Hector, with the aid of Puchi, destroy their lives with cocaine and heroin. A nervous breakdown provides Hector with a short respite from drug hell, during which he looks towards Heaven as he seeks spiritual guidance of the Catholic/Santeria variety. Like every major turn in Hector's life, his encounter with religion is punctuated with music.

We cheer Hector on, but his brief religious interlude doesn't last. One powerful scene has him throwing away the beads that symbolized his recovery and picking up a needle with which he commences his self-poisoning.

His marriage falls apart during this time and, in a final blow, Lavoe contracts AIDS.

All-in-all, a good effort. This movie will be a right-of-passage for salsa fans.

As an aside, my estimation of Marc Antony's singing surged during El Cantante. I remember not being too impressed with him years back when I saw him perform with Celia Cruz and Oscar D'Leon, but he performs wonderfully here. His acting isn't too bad, either.

Politics/Message:

Not too political. I appreciated the fact that the movie didn't deal with racism In fact, white Americans seem to be absent from the movie. Of course, the movie implies that drug use is bad. The movie esteems family and offers religion as a way out of negative lifestyles.