Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Sorry but this could have been a good film, the acting was very good, but who wrote the awful script? There was just far too much bad language and I turned the DVD off half way through. I am no prude but does anyone really use the F word THAT much? If so they need help! I was really looking forward to this film because of the good reviews and the fact it was about Salsa ( having Jennifer Lopez to look at doesn't hurt either ) but it really was spoiled. I know that I am probably alone in this but for me constant bad language just grates and it spoils my enjoyment of any film. Some swearing can be justified but it got worse as the film went on. Surely there were better ways to show the decline of a man into drugs than that? For me it is sloppy scriptwriting and even sloppier direction of what could have been a really good biopic.

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.

I had been looking forward to seeing this film, despite the wretched reviews. After viewing it last night, however, I can understand why so many people (professional critics especially) were disgusted with El Cantante.Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are both capable actors who could have portrayed Puchi and Hector LaVoe as genuine human beings - complex, driven and conflicted - but instead all they're given to work with is mind-bogglingly superficial claptrap, posing as a script, which shows them as nothing more than clichés: she marries the up-and-coming singer who turns out to be a clueless drug addict and he drags her down with him or at least he does his very best to try, blah blah blah. There's not a shred of insight into their characters anywhere to be found. The onstage scenes were good (and I liked the creative way the English translation of the lyrics were displayed on screen), but this is not supposed to be a music video, it's supposed to be a full-length movie. I was not familiar with Hector and Puchi going in, but I know enough to believe they deserved better.

Outstanding performance of Jennifer Lopez. I didn't know this side of her,as an actress with so much potential. Maybe she had to play this part to prove it.And Marc's wasn't bad at all! He himself could be "El Cantante" for the soft and powerful voice he has.The movie seemed to be somewhere between a musical and a drama. Jennifer made Puchi - Hector's wife so real,that she seemed to be the key of Hector's life (and I knew nothing about this salsa singer up until I saw this movie!). And Hector was the door that Puchi managed to open from time to time. I saw a great bond between those two and it came out a very good movie, worth seeing, especially if you love salsa music. And even if you don't, you'll start loving it!