El Cantante.

"[W]hile El Cantante's opening sequence is ridiculously hot, the rest of it is as dull as week-old mofongo," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant.

Robert Wilonsky, writing in the Voice, finds it to be a "turgid film about salsa star Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony), which doesn't so much go behind the music as beneath it."

"El Cantante is a love letter from its stars, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, to themselves," writes Matt Singer at IFC News. "Their love will last a lifetime, or at least as long as it takes you to sit through this muddled vanity project."

Updated through 8/3.

"El Cantante explores Latin New York's music and drug scene with greater depth than in Carlito's Way because it is always distinguished by Lopez and Anthony's personal authenticity," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "While the film memorializes Lavoe, Lopez and Anthony's performances make vivid and credible Latino characters that are usually movie stereotypes."

In the New York Times, Mirta Ojito profiles director Leon Ichaso.

Agustin Gurza profiles Marc Anthony for the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 8/3: "On the evidence of El Cantante..., Marc Anthony is not much of a screen actor," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. So it "helps" that Lopez "does enough acting for the two of them."

"Lopez gives a fine performance here: She's always been an incredibly likable on-screen presence, but this role gives her more to dig into," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Even so, three-quarters of the way through the picture, after the 2,000th close-up of the admittedly gorgeous Lopez (who is one of the movie's producers) looking resolute and leonine, I started to wonder a little bit more about Lavoe. Just who was this guy?... Ichaso loses sight of him: We get more of the understandably frustrated Puchi and less of Lavoe, who seems to recede into the gold-foil wallpaper long before his unfortunate and untimely death."

"Cantante introduces intriguing, relevant themes one minute, only to abandon them the next," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club, where he gives it a "C."

Posted by dwhudson at August 2, 2007 2:08 PM