El Cantante (2007)

25% of critics liked it
(106 reviews)
63% of users liked it
(8,969 ratings)

Pop icon Marc Anthony steps into the role of Salsa superstar Hector Lavoe in this biopic that follows the singer from his early career success as a Puerto Rican teen sensation to his later status as a New York City Latin idol while also documenting his ongoing struggle against drug and alcohol… More Pop icon Marc Anthony steps into the role of Salsa superstar Hector Lavoe in this biopic that follows the singer from his early career success as a Puerto Rican teen sensation to his later status as a New York City Latin idol while also documenting his ongoing struggle against drug and alcohol addiction. Actress and pop star Jennifer Lopez co-stars as Puchi; Lavoe's longtime muse and love interest. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 54 min.
Directed By: Leon Ichaso
Written By: Leon Ichaso, David Darmstaeder, Todd Anthony Bello
Genres: Musical & Performing Arts, Drama

In Theaters: Aug 3, 2007 Wide
On DVD: Oct 30, 2007
Studio: Picturehouse

Critic Reviews

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
This may be one of the very few biopics in which the subject is marginalized to the point of irrelevance.
Mark Lepage, Globe and Mail
El Cantante has to legitimize its subject before it can immortalize him; and in the effort, it makes the mistake of letting a star get in the way of the truth.
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper
I would have liked to have seen a more in-depth look at the salsa movement. Still, we do get a lot of great music, and Anthony is a natural onscreen in a tailor-made role.
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Marc Anthony plays the smack-addicted singer, who has some dynamite numbers but not much to say for himself.
Lou Lumenick, New York Post
A downer of a musical biopic that leaves no cliché unturned.
Joey Guerra, Houston Chronicle
The film's first half is an uneven string of scenes that offer little setup and sometimes confuse.
Matthew Turner, ViewLondon
This is an entertaining biopic that's worth seeing for the terrific musical sequences and for the superb performances by Anthony and Lopez. Recommended.
Charlotte O'Sullivan, This is London
In fact, Lopez deserves praise for pushing this project. The recently deceased Puchi (who helped generate the script and pushed for Lopez to play her) is not the kind of character you see on screen every day.
Mike McCahill, Daily Telegraph
Leon Ichaso's film soft-pedals everything save the language in what often resembles a made-for-cable biopic.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
There is something entirely dead about Lopez's performance. No matter how superficially lively she makes it, she is always simply mouthing the lines. Never mind Jenny from the block. Jenny is the block. Of wood.
Kevin Maher, Times [UK]
The film, however, beginning with a flashback to 1963, is a soft-pedalled account of Lavoe's rise to fame and his drug-related downfall that has more in common with the biopic parody Walk Hard than anything as muddy as real life.
Stella Papamichael, Film4
It doesn't help that, in the title role, Marc Anthony has all the onscreen charisma of wet dough.
Wally Hammond, Time Out
This messy, maudlin portrait of the decline and decline of Puerto Rico-born salsa star Héctor Lavoe wavers uncertainly between cable channel biopic and socially concerned drug movie.
Heather Huntington, ReelzChannel.com
Thought it was impossible to make the story of a drug-addicted musical icon boring? You were wrong.
Urban Cinefile Critics, Urban Cinefile
Jennifer Lopez is superb as Puchi, delivering a totally credible, multi dimensional character.
Felix Vasquez Jr., Cinema Crazed
I want a great film about Hector Lavoe, and after watching this, I'm still waiting for it...
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
It's steadily downhill after J. Lo picks up her man from the local crack house and licks coke off his ****, but it's worth sticking with it for Marc Anthony's performance.
Prairie Miller, Critical Women
Marc Anthony's heavily drugged henpecked trophy hubby Lavoe is upstaged offstage at all times by Lopez as the singer's screeching nag of a wife.
Prairie Miller, NewsBlaze
Jennifer Lopez plays it tough and down and dirty, on the Mexican border.
Renee Schonfeld, Common Sense Media
Another singer self-destructs, to a Latin beat.

Read all 20 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

William D

[size=3]"El Cantante," starring [b]Jennifer Lopez[/b] and [b]Marc Anthony[/b], is what I expected it to be: an extremely superficial, television-level biopic with great music and entertaining concert footage.[/size]… More
[size=3]"El Cantante," starring [b]Jennifer Lopez[/b] and [b]Marc Anthony[/b], is what I expected it to be: an extremely superficial, television-level biopic with great music and entertaining concert footage.[/size] [img]http://cdn.channel.aol.com/pmms/productpagemovies/04/05/2171640[/img] [size=3]It has some extra value as one of the rare American films about Latinos, and for this reason I think an effort should be made to see it. We're certainly not going to get better Latino-American movies if we don't support the precious few that do get made. But the shallowness of the film cannot be denied.[/size] [size=3]Jennifer Lopez is intriguingly positioned as one of the only Latin pop stars well known in white America. She's as famous as Madonna, which is a stunning achievement on her part. She could substantially broaden the horizons of the white community by in a sense teaching them about Latin culture. That strikes me as a very important cultural enterprise that could also have important socio-political implications.[/size] [img]http://www.pastemagazine.com/images/articles/4678_image_1.jpg[/img] [size=3]With this film, as superficial as it is, Lopez and husband Marc Anthony have introduced a broader audience to Puerto Rican legend Hector Lavoie, who teamed up with Willie Colon in New York City in the 1970s to create the rhythmic, percussive style that came to be known as salsa.[/size] [size=3]As an example of how films like this can expand white horizons, I left "El Cantante" seriously wanting to know more about Lavoie, Colon and the rest of the salsa scene.[/size] [img]http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/picturehouse/el_cantante/jennifer_lopez/elcantante1.jpg[/img] [size=3]At the start of the movie, Hector is already an adult and already a singer. We meet him in Puerto Rico when he is about to embark on his move to New York. The vast majority of the film takes place in New York, where he meets the woman who will become his wife and lifelong partner. We watch him meet Colon and explode onto the salsa scene. Additionally, we are along for the ride when he discovers heroin, which would be his undoing.[/size] [size=3]There are a couple of moments where it's suggested that the couple might have been bisexual, and that perhaps this is how he caught the HIV virus, which killed him in the 1980s. If he was indeed regularly having sex with men, the film certainly blurs that out of the story. But that's really neither here nor there. The important thing to know about Lavoie is that he was a musical genius. And more Americans should know this.[/size] [size=3]Kudos to Lopez and Anthony for trying to bring his story to a wider audience.[/size]
Joseph E

Hector Lavoe? Who is he? A salsa legend? A drug addict? An immigrant from Peurto Rico? Well he was all three. Yet, this film isn't just about him, but also his personal and family life, along set with his wife Puchi there to keep him from destroying his own life. Either way,… More
Hector Lavoe? Who is he? A salsa legend? A drug addict? An immigrant from Peurto Rico? Well he was all three. Yet, this film isn't just about him, but also his personal and family life, along set with his wife Puchi there to keep him from destroying his own life. Either way, this film grasped me and made me really realize what Love and pain can do to a person, and Lopez and Anthony have a great chemistry onscreen and set of a blazing fire od charisma and sensational entertainment. For me it was a "Three and a Half out of Four" Stars picture. A Slight reccomendation.
William G

About as generic as musician biopics come. Lopez is especially grating.
Remi L

Very enjoyable, good performances. Most biopics follow the same formula: star starts off poverty-stricken, small fish in a big pond, meets the right people by chance, becomes uber-successful, then the drugs, loose women come along, then tragedy. El Cantante doesn't stray from… More
Very enjoyable, good performances. Most biopics follow the same formula: star starts off poverty-stricken, small fish in a big pond, meets the right people by chance, becomes uber-successful, then the drugs, loose women come along, then tragedy. El Cantante doesn't stray from this formula either, but Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's performances were good, very enjoyable, I think they really brought life to the real people they were portraying. Plus it didn't hurt that the salsa music was really infectious. I LOVE Marc Anthony's voice, I think its raw and mature and he was a wise choice for the role of Hector Lavoe.