CAST: Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Federico Castelluccio, Romi Dias, Vincent Laresca SCR: Leon Ichaso, and David Darmstaeder & Todd Bello DIR: Leon Ichaso STUDIO: Picturehouse MPAA: R for drug use, pervasive language and some sexuality. RUNNING TIME: 102 min. OFFICIAL SITE: elcantantemovie.com I’m positive the life and death of Salsa legend Hector Lavoe is fascinating stuff, with the kind of music, pathos and glory that defines the best, award-winning biopics – and let’s face it – there have been heaps of Oscar love ladled onto by-the-numbers movie-of-the-week fodder like Walk The Line and Ray these past few years. Lavoe’s tale of drug addiction against the backdrop of his meteoric rise may be all-too-familiar, but it’s a story that, when told even adequately, can be entertaining. After all, good actors tend to give great performances in movies like these and are justly rewarded with salary hikes and awards. But see, the key word is that phrase is “story,” something El Cantante is gleefully unburdened with. The performances are solid. Marc Anthony, starring with wife Jennifer Lopez, is perfectly cast as Lavoe and his musical sequences are riveting. Lopez acquits herself well in a difficult, unlikable role. The supporting players are all aces. The photography is authentic, while the locales convey a time and place. Somewhere, deep inside the millions of feet of footage, there lies a good movie. But it’s really hard to tell from watching El Cantante. My guess is that there was no script. I came to that conclusion after being blunted by a series of sequences that may have lasted for 116 minutes but could have been assembled in almost any order and achieved the same feeling. El Cantante is a two-hour montage. Hector meets Puchi (Lopez). They get high. They have sex. He becomes a hit. They fight. Make up. Have more sex. He sells more albums. Plays more shows. Starts taking heroin for no definitive reason (and after making a big deal about how he didn’t like the sensation of smoking pot the first time). Repeat as necessary. It’s really frustrating because you get the sense from watching any two minutes of this film that everyone involved, from the actors to the costumers, cared enough about it to invest 110%. They should pass out T-shirts that say "I spent a year of my life working on this movie and all I got was a stupid music video." Jennifer Lopez is one of the most roundly hated women in the industry and I won’t spend this time debating why. But for me, this woman has Out of Sight on her resume, which is enough to make me curious. And as opposed to continue choosing likable roles, she plays Lavoe’s domineering, opinionated loudmouth of a wife. Points for that. I’m not saying she deserves an Oscar (or ever will), but that same role might have very easily been cast with someone who would have made it more sunshiny. Reese Witherspoon, I’m looking at you. It’s hard to care about anything in this film. The structure has Puchi looking back on her two decades with Hector, filling in all the details that somehow never got filmed, like how everyone liked him, or how great 1985 was. Her B&W "interview" sequences seem like they are from a different film, and in essence, makes Hector a supporting player in his own movie The rest is a jagged blur of incongruent sequences, musical numbers, half conversations and costume changes. My wife suggested that maybe the style was such to illustrate what a hazy mishmash their lives were because of the drugs, which I would half buy if not for the fact that nowhere in the press materials did it invoke Requiem For A Dream in comparison. Nope, what remains is probably the best stitch job of a movie they could manage, especially considering the 18 months the movie spent in post-production. But if I’m wrong and there are great scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor in favor of the movie’s "style," then someone’s gotta pay. Give Jennifer Lopez a break. Because she stars with her husband, El Cantante has been accused of being a vanity piece. But the name you haven’t heard mentioned much is probably the one person most responsible for any true ill-will this film generates. His name is Leon Ichaso, and he’s the writer and director. The original title of this film was Who Killed Hector Lavoe? That's debatable -- but regarding who killed his biopic, I'd start with that Leon guy. --reviewed by DENNIS WILLIS